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THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 


GUSTAVUS   FRANKLIN  SWIFT  ABOUT   I902.       A  PASS 
CARD  FOR  VISITORS  ABOUT  THAT  TIME. 


THE  YANKEE  OF 
THE  YARDS 


THE  BIOGRAPHY  OF 
GUSTAVUS  FRANKLIN  SWIFT 

"By 
LOUIS  F.  SWIFT 

IN  COLLABORATION  WITH 

ARTHUR  VAN  VLISSINGEN,  JR. 


CHICAGO  &  NEW  YORK 

A.  W.  SHAW  COMPANY 

LONDON,  A.  W.  SHAW  AND  COMPANY,  LIMITED 

1927 


COPYRIGHT,   1927,  BY  A.   W.   SHAW  COMPANY 
PRINTED  IN   THE  UNITED   STATES   OF  AMERICA 


O  1    /   *<*"-Q^<  tyAA      WW     -«&ZAJVLr 


USJ2    J 


FOREWORD 

SHEER  accident  has  swept  many  men  to  that 
slight  height  above  their  fellows  which  the  world 
calls  fame  or  attainment  or  success.  At  their  sides 
stand  others  who  reached  the  same  place  by  ceaseless 
work  and  native  shrewdness. 

For  this  reason  the  life  stories  of  most  outstanding 
men  lack  interest  except  to  the  unimaginative  who 
worship  success  for  its  own  sake.  Accidents  which 
turn  out  well  make  dull  tales,  toiling  plodders  make 
still  duller. 

Rare  indeed  is  the  man  who  attains  preeminence 
with  the  steady,  irresistible  thrust — who  leaves  in 
those  who  started  with  him  a  sense  that  his  progress 
was  inevitable,  that  one  could  no  more  have  stopped 
him  than  an  Alpine  glacier  or  a  Sierra  cascade.  Such 
a  man,  to  be  sure,  combines  ability  and  gluttony  for 
work.  But  to  these  sober,  uninteresting  virtues  their 
owner  has  the  good  fortune  to  add  being  born  at  a 
time  and  place  which  make  his  every  stroke  count  for 
two  or  ten  or  ten  thousand  times  the  strokes  of  men 
who  came  before  or  will  come  after.  Every  circum- 
stance from  his  birth  to  his  grave  seems  calculated  to 
give  him  a  lead  over  his  fellows.  Every  apparent 
misfortune  turns  out  to  be  his  lucky  chance. 

So  it  was  with  the  first  Vanderbilt.  Rockefeller 
and  Ford  are  subsequent  examples  in  the  field  of 

iii 


iv  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

American  industry.  And  had  young  Bonaparte  been 
born  fifteen  years  after  he  was,  he  would  have  been 
a  child  instead  of  a  lieutenant  when  France  burst  into 
fire.  For  all  his  military  genius  and  burning  ambi- 
tion he  would  probably  have  served  his  country  as  a 
pompous  little  colonel  of  the  Guards,  while  the 
world  went  ways  far  different  from  those  history 
records. 

What  created  of  a  corporal  an  emperor,  of  these 
other  men  the  chief  commercial  figures  of  their 
times?  For  want  of  a  better  name  we  call  it  destiny, 
that  motive  power  which  makes  life  interesting — and 
which  makes  interesting  lives.  For  it  smacks  of  des- 
tiny when  force  and  industry  and  shrewdness  are 
found  in  conjunction,  with  all  the  auspices  favorable 
to  their  most  effective  use. 

Destiny  it  was  which  presided  at  the  birth  of  a 
boy  in  a  Cape  Cod  village  ninety-odd  years  ago.  He 
was  not  to  change  the  world's  maps,  nor  make  mili- 
tary history.  Instead,  he  was  the  human  instrument 
by  which  destiny  transformed  the  world's  sources  and 
supplies  of  an  essential  class  of  foodstuffs.  From  a 
start  which  at  first  glance  seems  inauspicious,  he  built 
a  knowledge  and  an  ability  that  were  to  serve  him 
well  when  circumstances  called  them  into  full  play. 

A  younger  son  of  a  large  family  on  a  sandy,  unfer- 
tile farm  in  the  dreadful  '40s,  he  did  not  have  much 
of  a  chance;  yet — his  elder  brothers  were  butchers 
and  from  them  he  learned  the  ins  and  outs  of  the 
trade  on  which  he  built.    New  England  was  a  long 


FOREWORD  v 

way  from  the  plains  which  sent  it  cattle ;  still — here 
a  trade  current  was  first  felt  which  lent  its  strength 
to  the  young  butcher's  brawny  blows  on  Fortune's 
door.  Chicago  in  the  '70s  was  a  sprawling  city  with 
little  to  recommend  it  to  his  energies  except  a  plenti- 
ful supply  of  cattle  from  the  western  plains.  The 
Yankee  left  its  "Yards"  the  undisputed  meat-packing 
center  of  the  hungry  world. 

That  he  accomplished  so  much  may  be  surprising, 
but  it  is  not  necessarily  of  great  interest.  That  he 
gained  great  wealth  in  the  process  is  neither  surpris- 
ing nor  worth  more  than  passing  comment.  That  he 
worked  hard,  was  honest,  practiced  the  homely  copy- 
book virtues  is  neither  here  nor  there. 

The  salty,  spicy  fact  is  that  destiny  swept  him  on 
to  accomplishment  extraordinary  in  any  one  man's 
career,  that  his  abilities  and  the  world's  changing 
needs  came  together  to  produce  a  career  as  excep- 
tional as  it  is  interesting.  His  battles  and  his  victories 
were  in  the  field  of  business.  It  is  this,  and  not  the 
material  success  he  attained,  which  makes  the  chron- 
icle of  his  life  a  chronicle  of  commerce. 

For  destiny,  that  spinner  of  men's  threads  of  life, 
decreed  that  business  should  be  his  skein.  .... 


CONTENTS 

Foreword       iii 

I 


'A  Dollar  Wasted" 


II 
"We  Cannot  Fail!" 24 

III 
Just  Right  or  All  Wrong 46 

IV 
Taking  the  East 65 

V 
Many  a  Minute  . 82 

VI 
"I  Vote  No!" .     102 

VII 
He  Had  to  Spread  Out 117 

VIII 
"I  Raise  Better  Men" 138 

IX 
The  Forbidden  Yardstick 158 

X 

Fight  When  You  Must 178 

vii 


viii  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

XI 

Never  Stay  Beaten 193 

Index 213 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Gustavus   Franklin   Swift,   about    1902.     A  pass  card   for 

visitors  about  that  time Frontispiece 

Union  Stockyards  of  Chicago  in  1865 10 

The  slaughterhouse  at  Barnstable.  In  the  circle,  the  wagon 
that  G.  F.  Swift  drove  when  he  sold  his  meats  from 
door  to  door 50 

Longhorns  came  from  the  plains  of  Texas 72 

Edwin  C.  Swift.     D.  M.  Anthony 78 

Louis  F.  Swift 90 

The  old  Live  Stock  Exchange  Building,  Chicago 114 

Sally  Sears  Crowell  Swift,  mother  of  G.  F.  Swift.   William 

Swift,  father  of  G.  F.  Swift 120 

Wellington  Leavitt,  dean  of  the  cattle  buyers,  who  became 
associated  with  G.  F.  Swift  about  1875,  tne  Prince  of 
Wales,  and  Louis  F.  Swift  riding  through  "the  Yards" 
October  13,  1924 128 

G.  F.  Swift,  about  1885 132 

Union  Stockyards,  Chicago,  1927 154 

The  farm  house   at   Barnstable.     G.   F.   Swift's   accounts, 

1859-60,  recording  sales  of  meat  from  his  butcher  cart.      174 

The  original  windlass  used  by  G.  F.  Swift  for  hoisting  steer 
after  killing  —  Barnstable,  1861-1869.  The  original 
bull-ring  used  by  G.  F.  Swift  for  pulling  animal  down 
for  slaughter 196 


THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 


CHAPTER  I 

"A  DOLLAR  WASTED.  ..." 

ANYONE  whose  work  kept  him  on  the  bank  of 
l\ Chicago's  old  "Bubbly  Creek  back  of  the  Yards" 
was  not  to  be  envied  his  job  in  the  1880s  and  '90s. 
The  marvel  was  that  he  would  hold  the  job.  For 
where  today  a  boulevard  is  building  astride  a  huge 
tiled  channel,  thirty  years  ago  there  ran  a  malodor- 
ous open  sewer. 

In  his  turn  the  workman  had  something  to  marvel 
at:  the  regularity  with  which  another  man  visited  this 
unattractive  locality.  The  frequent  visitor  was  a  tall 
bearded  man  above  middle  age.  He  invariably  wore 
a  dark  suit  with  a  tail  coat,  and  usually  a  stifl  hat. 
His  stoop  suggested  desk  work.  His  bearing  sug- 
gested authority.  To  the  knees  he  had  the  appear- 
ance of  a  business  proprietor  fresh  from  his  private 
office. 

At  the  knees  his  appearance  shifted  abruptly.  The 
tailored  trousers  disappeared  into  a  plebeian  pair  of 
top-boots.  The  cowhide  bore  unmistakable  traces  of 
wear  outside  the  counting  room.  Plainly  the  visitor 
was  not  one  who  devoted  his  time  exclusively  to 
papers  and  meetings  and  that  nebulous  science  called 
management. 

This  man  was  my  father,  Gustavus  Franklin  Swift. 


4  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

Even  after  Swift  &  Company  was  well  established  on 
a  large  scale,  he  would  frequently  visit  the  bank  of 
Bubbly  Creek.  He  had,  in  fact,  gone  to  the  trouble 
of  finding  out  where  the  company's  sewer  emptied 
into  Old  Bubbly;  this  point  was  his  invariable  objec- 
tive. 

It  was  not  a  pleasant  place  to  visit.  In  those  days 
sewage  disposal  was  more  direct  than  scientific.  One 
might  have  pardoned  the  head  of  a  large  business  for 
avoiding  it  altogether. 

But  down  to  Bubbly  Creek  father  would  go,  and 
scrutinize  the  sewer  outlet  for  a  few  minutes  every 
once  in  a  while.  He  was  on  the  lookout  for  waste. 
If  he  saw  any  fat  coming  out,  that  evidenced  waste 
in  the  packing  house.  Briskly  he  would  head  for  the 
superintendent's  office.  And  before  the  episode  was 
closed,  someone  would  smart. 

His  long  suit  was  keeping  expenses  down.  Next 
in  his  interest,  perhaps,  came  developing  by-prod- 
ucts— which  is  another  form  of  the  same  thing.  Low 
expenses  and  maximum  return  from  every  pound 
of  the  live  animal  are  what  made  G.  F.  Swift  a 
leader  in  the  new  industry  of  which  he  was  a  founder. 
For  even  at  the  start  of  his  career  as  a  Chicago  pack- 
er, when  margins  were  not  narrowed  down  as  they 
have  been  since,  he  recognized  that  waste  and  ac- 
complishment are  incompatible.  A  dollar  wasted  is 
gone  forever — with  no  one  the  better  off  for  its  going. 

It  was  his  constant  seeking  after  ways  to  save — a 
frugality  engendered  and  inbred  by  ancestors  who  for 


"A  DOLLAR  WASTED  .  .  .  .  "  5 

two  hundred  and  fifty  years  had  fought  a  none  too 
equal  battle  with  the  miserly  sands  of  Cape  Cod — 
which  led  the  Yankee  from  Massachusetts  and  out 
to  the  stockyards  of  Chicago.  It  was  his  never-fail- 
ing creed  of  economy  which  built  under  his  leader- 
ship a  concern  that  today  does  a  manufacturing 
business  second  in  volume  only  to  United  States  Steel. 

Truly  it  may  be  said,  and  with  little  room  for 
dispute,  that  his  sharp  eye  for  the  pennies  and  nickels 
and  dimes  founded  a  compact,  economically  efficient 
industry  to  supplant  a  scattered  assortment  of  ineffi- 
cient, uneconomic  small  units.  The  proof  of  the 
economic  service  he  performed  is  in  the  large  finan- 
cial success,  on  the  narrowest  of  profit  margins,  of 
the  business  unit  he  built. 

Through  his  years  of  working  with  live  stock  and 
meat  products  and  packing  he  had  accumulated  a 
fund  of  experience — sometimes  it  seemed  to  a  har- 
assed department  head  that  father's  experience  must 
be  principally  a  knowledge  of  where  to  look  for 
leaks  of  money  or  material.  His  watchfulness — of 
which  his  frequent  visits  to  Bubbly  Creek  were  typi- 
cal— taught  every  good  man  in  the  organization  the 
need  for  not  wasting  a  penny.  Few  pennies,  conse- 
quently, were  wasted. 

First  thing  every  morning  at  the  office  would  come 
the  question,  "Any  hogs  die  during  the  night?"  If 
any  had  died,  there  was  trouble — enough  trouble  so 
that  the  loss  did  not  occur  again  soon.  He  knew 
that  hogs,   if   they   have   plenty   of   room,   do   not 


6  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

smother.  Eventually  everyone  who  had  anything  to 
do  with  the  company's  hogs  knew  the  same  thing.  So 
the  hogs  were  kept  in  roomy,  uncrowded  pens — and 
few  were  lost  from  this  source. 

It  was  the  eye  for  waste  which  brought  Gustavus 
Swift  from  the  East  to  Chicago  in  1875.  Glamour 
enveloped  the  cattle  business  of  fifty  and  sixty  years 
ago.  These  were  the  picturesque  days  of  longhorn 
herds  plodding  in  fogs  of  dust  across  the  Great 
Plains. 

Wide-hatted  cowmen  flanked  the  herds,  yipping 
and  swinging  their  ropes  to  drive  the  strays  back  into 
line. 

Hundreds  of  miles  the  steers  were  herded,  to  the 
end  of  steel  where  venturesome  railroads  pushed 
their  pioneering  lines  into  the  West.  At  the  railroad 
the  cattle  were  driven  aboard  slatted  cars  and  hauled 
to  the  East  of  concentrated  populations  which  de- 
manded beef  above  the  local  ability  to  supply. 

The  animals  were  shipped  to  central  live-stock 
markets.  One  of  these  was  at  Brighton,  just  outside 
Boston;  another  at  Albany;  another  at  Buffalo.  At 
these  stockyards  the  animals  were  sold  and  shipped 
to  the  slaughterers. 

An  amount  of  the  glamour  of  the  cattle  ranges 
surrounded  even  the  stockyards — diluted  glamour, 
but  glamour  nevertheless.  For  here  cattlemen  rode 
from  pen  to  pen,  bartered  on  horseback,  and  in  tall 
cowhide  boots  swaggered  the  streets  of  the  cities. 

But  beyond  the  stockyards  was  little  of  the  glam- 


"A  DOLLAR  WASTED  .  .  .  .  "  7 

ourous.  Unsanitary  conditions,  thriftless  practices, 
unsound  customs  prevailed  on  every  hand. 

Each  community  had  its  little  slaughterhouse. 
Animals  beyond  the  local  supply  were  shipped  from 
the  nearest  stockyards.  They  were  slaughtered  by  the 
local  butchers,  who  sold  the  meat  before  it  had  time 
to  spoil.  Refrigerators  for  keeping  meat  were  almost 
unknown. 

The  abattoir  was  literally  a  shambles.  Meat  and 
hides  were  the  products.  Livers,  hearts,  tongues  all 
went  unweighed  to  the  meat  market  man  who  bought 
a  whole  carcass  of  beef.  Everything  else  was  waste, 
or  at  best  was  used  as  an  unwholesome  ration  for  a 
sty  of  "slaughterhouse  hogs."1 

Into  this  hodge-podge  of  small,  dirty,  wasteful 
local  businesses  came  the  Cape  Cod  Yankee  who  was 
to  upset  practically  every  idea  which  had  been  ac- 
cepted in  the  trade  since  its  inception.  His  acquaint- 
ance with  meats  and  live  stock  had  begun  in  1855, 
at  the  age  of  fourteen,  when  he  went  to  work  for  his 
brother,  a  local  butcher.  It  had  continued,  and 
grown,  through  the  different  phases  of  slaughterer, 
local  dealer,  export  cattle  shipper,  and  wholesale 
meat  dealer  until  at  thirty-five  he  was  partner  in  two 
large,  well-established  firms  and  sole  owner  of  a  third, 

1  The  improvements  in  sanitation  and  the  development  of  inspection 
methods  constituted  one  of  G.  F.  Swift's  notable  contributions  to  the  prep- 
aration of  meats  for  human  consumption.  His  methods,  scientifically 
worked  out  in  the  light  of  scientific  discoveries,  formed  a  basis  for  the 
inspection  and  control  exercised  by  the  Bureau  of  Animal  Industry  of  the 
United  States  Government.  This  supervision  is  extended  to  over  nine 
hundred  packers  today,  principally  those  engaged  in  interstate  commerce. 


8  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

local  and  smaller  enterprise.  His  interests  had  spread 
from  Cape  Cod  to  Albany  and  Buffalo.  His  firms 
did  business  in  eastern  Massachusetts  as  well  as 
abroad.  He  was,  as  they  say  down  Cape  Cod  way, 
getting  on  in  the  world. 

But  Gustavus  Franklin  Swift  was  never  content 
simply  to  get  on.  Always  he  saw  opportunities  ahead 
for  eliminating  waste,  thereby  getting  more  business 
and  making  more  money  for  himself. 

At  first  he  saw  the  waste  of  buying  cattle  which 
had  passed  through  the  hands  of  too  many  middle- 
men and  against  which  too  many  charges  had  ac- 
cumulated. He  went  west  to  buy  the  cattle  nearer 
their  source,  to  eliminate  these  extra  charges. 

Then  he  began  to  think  about  the  waste  of  shipping 
the  whole  animal  east  instead  of  shipping  only  the 
parts  which  were  needed  there.  It  was  not  alone  the 
freight  on  the  sixty  per  cent  inedible  portion — 
though  that  was  a  tempting  saving  if  it  could  be 
attained.  But  also  in  shipping  the  cattle  east  they 
were  bruised  too  much.  They  shrank  in  weight  too 
much.  The  expense  of  feeding  in  transit  was  too 
much.  It  was  all  waste — and  to  my  father  any  waste 
was  too  much ! 

Father  was  the  man  who  began  to  slaughter  cattle 
at  Chicago,  and  to  ship  the  beef  east.  At  first  this 
was  confined  to  the  winter  months.  Then,  through 
the  refrigerator  car's  development,  it  became  an  all- 
year  business.  And  thereby  the  greatest  saving  pos- 
sible in  producing  meat  from  animals  had  become 


"A  DOLLAR  WASTED  ...-."  9 

a  reality.  This  saving  from  that  time  on  meant  cheap- 
er meat  for  the  consumer,  higher  prices  for  the  cat- 
tleman— and  the  birth  of  a  great  industry. 

It  was  not,  of  course,  as  simple  as  all  that.  There 
were  years  of  venturing,  years  of  back-breaking, 
heart-breaking,  spirit-breaking  work.  There  were 
in  those  early  years  times  when  if  G.  F.  Swift's  debts 
had  been  measured  against  his  assets  he  would  have 
been  unquestionably  insolvent. 

But  his  frugality  in  the  management  of  his  business 
overcame  these  handicaps — and  left  him  eventually 
in  command  of  one  of  the  greatest  businesses  of  the 
world. 

How  the  refrigerator  car  and  the  beef  cooler  were 
perfected  is  a  story  in  itself.  Through  many  a  sum- 
mer's night  at  his  plant  he  alternately  eyed  the  ther- 
mometer in  his  single  beef  cooler  and  ordered  his 
men  to  shovel  more  salt  and  ice,  faster. 

Through  many  years,  before  the  Interstate  Com- 
merce Act  was  passed,  he  fought  single-handed  a  rail- 
road association  which  would  not  haul  his  dressed 
beef  at  a  rate  he  could  pay. 

How  he  wore  down  the  eastern  public's  prejudice 
against  western  dressed  beef  is  of  itself  an  epic  of 
selling. 

With  all  of  these  major  problems  to  handle,  how- 
ever, he  never  overlooked  the  economies  of  opera- 
tion and  the  need  to  develop  every  possible  revenue 
from  the  materials  passing  through  his  hands.  If 
he  had  lost  sight  of  this,  then  Swift  &  Company  could 


io  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

hardly  have  survived  the  early  years  to  remain  in 
business  successfully  today. 

In  the  free-and-easy  days  of  slaughtering  in  New 
England,  for  example,  the  slaughterer  saved,  besides 
the  meat  and  the  hide,  only  the  head,  feet,  tripe, 
heart,  liver,  and  tongue.  The  head,  feet,  and  tripe 
constituted  a  "set,"  and  a  set  was  sold  separately.  If 
the  customer  bought  a  whole  carcass,  he  received  free 
a  heart,  tongue,  and  liver. 

On  the  outskirts  of  the  larger  slaughterhouses,  such 
as  that  of  Anthony,  Swift  &  Company  at  Fall  River, 
there  grew  up  the  establishments  of  people,  who, 
while  the  slaughterers  blindly  followed  the  age-old 
customs,  made  money  out  of  what  the  meat  men 
threw  away.  The  butchers  were  glad  to  have  this 
"rubbish"  carted  off,  for  disposing  of  it  was  difficult. 

The  by-products  people  made  a  good  thing  of  it. 
The  big  firm  in  the  trade  which  included  such  prod- 
ucts as  neat's  foot  oil,  tripe,  and  so  on  was  also  operat- 
ing extensively  in  some  of  the  materials  which  it  did 
not  have  to  pay  for  because  they  were  not  included  in 
the  sets  which  had  a  market  value. 

Shortly  after  my  father  came  to  Chicago  and  be- 
gan operating  on  the  larger  scale  which  characterized 
most  of  the  Chicago  dressed-meat  establishments,  he 
was  instrumental  in  developing  paying  outlets  for 
other  by-products.  By-products  revenue  is  what 
developed  his  business. 

A  man  was  brought  on  from  Fall  River  who  con- 
tracted for  sausage  casings  at  a  stipulated  figure  per 


m;>*m:mm.:-    ■■«■■■  m  f 


,  ■.  ■  ■■■.  .  ,  \'  . ' 


V.MM 


M!W:-.    'Me:      viS    m  ifg 


If  #11  j-      5 


"A  DOLLAR  WASTED  .  .  .  .  "  n 

carcass.  Blood  and  tankage  became  a  source  of  fer- 
tilizer. We  made  a  hobby,  almost,  of  fertilizer  and 
a  few  years  later  of  oleomargarine.  In  our  early  days 
at  Chicago,  by-products  people  bought  the  sets,  the 
blood  and  tankage,  and  the  shin-bones  for  knife  han- 
dles. Peddlers  were  encouraged  who  came  to  buy 
livers  and  sell  them  from  their  wagons  in  the  poorer 
parts  of  town.  What  livers  could  not  be  disposed 
of  in  more  profitable  ways  were  tanked.  Nothing 
was  given  away — this  would  have  been  waste. 

G.  F.  Swift  knew,  by  Cape  Cod  instinct,  that  no 
enterprise  can  grow  soundly  and  survive  the  lean 
days  which  always  come,  unless  it  blocks  off  every 
possible  source  of  waste.  Even  though  a  customer 
might  be  induced  to  buy  a  whole  carcass  instead  of 
only  three  quarters,  by  "throwing  in"  heart,  liver, 
and  tongue,  it  would  not  increase  that  customer's  sale 
of  meat.  His  retail  customers  could  be  counted  on 
to  eat  just  the  same  amount  of  meat;  and  if  he  bought 
the  smaller  quantity  he  would  simply  have  to  come 
back  that  much  sooner  to  replenish  his  stock.  Hence, 
if  the  heart,  liver,  and  tongue  could  be  sold  sepa- 
rately, and  made  to  yield  some  of  the  money  the  new 
packer  needed  so  urgently,  then  certainly  they  must 
yield  it. 

Before  he  had  finished  with  the  process,  he  was 
using  everything  from  the  animal  to  produce  a  profit. 
In  fact,  the  hackneyed  remark  that  Chicago  packers 
use  every  part  of  the  hog  but  the  squeal  probably  had 
its  inception  in  a  remark  my  father  once  made,  when 


i2  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

the  by-products  utilization  was  complete,  that  "Now 
we  use  all  of  the  hog  except  his  grunt." 

Not  that  Swift  &  Company  was  the  only  one  to 
do  anything  along  the  lines  of  by-products.  All  of 
the  sizable  packers  were  at  work  on  the  problem. 
The  keen  competition  among  them  all,  and  especially 
among  the  larger  concerns,  forced  down  prices  and 
forced  down  margins.  Unless  one  kept  abreast  of 
the  others  in  by-products  utilization,  then  that  lag- 
gard inevitably  went  under. 

G.  F.  Swift  was  without  question  the  aggressor  in 
this  war  for  extra  sources  of  revenue.  He  was  never 
satisfied  with  his  business.  He  knew  he  could  get 
more  if  he  could  crowd  his  prices  below  the  rest  of 
the  field  without  sacrificing  his  profit.  Out  of  this 
continual  pushing  for  sales  by  cutting  his  costs,  he 
built  his  own  business  to  a  place  of  preeminence. 

After  the  stage  of  selling  raw  materials  to  others 
to  make  products  from,  came  the  stage  where  our  own 
people  did  the  jobs  themselves  and  thus  crowded 
costs  down  a  little  more. 

New  lines  were  entered;  by-products  were  split 
into  further  by-products;  and  out  of  it  all,  the  public 
benefited  as  well  as  we  did. 

Along  with  the  development  of  by-products  reve- 
nue— ahead  of  it,  in  fact,  for  it  required  no  develop- 
ment of  processes — he  practiced  this  creed  of  keeping 
every  expense  at  rock-bottom.  Swift  &  Company 
had  a  reputation  wherever  it  was  known,  as  a  thrifty, 
compact,  well-managed  business.     There  were  no 


"A  DOLLAR  WASTED  ....."  13 

little  cracks  in  the  walls  which  permitted  anything 
to  get  away  undetected. 

One  of  father's  especial  ways  to  hold  down  expense 
was  to  avoid  alterations  which,  while  desirable,  were 
not  necessary.  He  hated  to  see  mechanics  at  work 
around  any  of  his  properties.  The  sight  of  a  man 
with  a  hammer  or  a  saw  or  a  trowel  was  a  red  flag 
to  him. 

"Whenever  you  see  a  lot  of  mechanics  at  work 
anywhere  you  are  in  charge,  fire  'em,"  were  the  in- 
structions he  once  gave  a  man  whom  he  had  placed 
over  a  considerable  section  of  the  company's  prop- 
erties. 

"But  sometimes  they  are  needed,  Mr.  Swift,"  pro- 
tested the  department  head. 

"They'll  find  their  way  back,  then,"  he  disposed 
of  this  argument.  "They're  a  luxury.  We  can't  af- 
ford luxuries.  It  isn't  only  the  high  wages  you  pay 
'em — it's  the  lumber  and  nails  and  brick  and  hard- 
ware they  use,  too.  No,  sir,  when  you  see  a  gang 
of  'em  around  and  you  don't  know  that  you  have 
to  have  'em,  be  on  the  safe  side  and  fire  'em.  That's 
the  way  I  always  work  it." 

After  all,  there  is  little  question  that  his  ideas 
were  fundamentally  right  in  regard  to  holding  down 
expenses.  Given  an  enterprise  which  has  an  economic 
reason  for  its  existence,  then  if  you  stop  every  leak, 
that  enterprise  is  bound  to  be  in  good  shape.  It  is 
the  leaks  which  ruin  more  basically  sound  businesses 
than  any  other  cause.     For  one  business  man  who 


i4  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

watches  expenses  carefully,  there  are  five  who  are 
careless.  And  of  fifty  who  are  careful,  not  more  than 
one  really  keeps  his  organization  keyed  up  to  the  im- 
portance of  waste  as  did  G.  F.  Swift. 

He  was  visiting  the  St.  Joseph  plant  back  in  the 
'90s,  shortly  after  it  had  been  built.  As  he  was  going 
over  the  plant  with  the  manager,  he  noticed  a  place 
where  car  loaders  had  spiked  a  loading  runway  to 
the  dock.  When  the  runway  had  been  removed,  the 
nails  had  been  left  sticking  up  from  the  planking. 

"Nice  dock  you  have  there,"  he  observed  casually. 

"Yes,  fine,  isn't  it?"  agreed  the  manager. 

"But  look  at  those  nails" — pointing  to  them.  "You 
won't  have  a  dock  if  you  let  'em  do  that." 

They  walked  along  and  father  began  looking  at 
some  other  parts  of  the  plant  with  the  superintend- 
ent, who  had  been  a  few  feet  behind  all  the  while. 
The  manager  meanwhile  encountered  one  of  the 
office  boys  in  the  yard  and  sent  word  by  him  to  the 
loading  foreman  that  those  nails  must  be  removed 
within  five  minutes. 

On  the  way  back,  the  chief  led  the  party  quite 
casually  along  the  loading  dock.  This  time  he  was 
with  the  superintendent.  And  while  he  appeared  to 
be  unaware,  the  manager  saw  him  looking  for  the 
nails  and  scraping  about  a  bit  with  his  foot  in  the 
vain  effort  to  find  them.  Finally  the  rest  of  the  party 
was  allowed  to  go  on  its  way,  while  the  manager  was 
taken  to  the  cooler  to  look  at  the  beef. 

Together    they    looked    over    the    carcasses    for 


"A  DOLLAR  WASTED  .  .  .  .  "  15 

perhaps  ten  minutes  without  a  word.  Then:  "Did 
you  have  those  nails  pulled  out?" 

"Yes,  Mr.  Swift." 

"Well,"  plaintively,  "I  wish  you  wouldn't  have 
things  fixed  up  until  after  I'm  off  the  plant.  How 
do  you  think  I'm  going  to  make  everybody  look  alive 
about  these  things  if  you  get  'em  fixed  up  before  I 
have  a  chance  to  tell  the  other  men  about  them?" 

When  the  St.  Joseph  plant  was  being  built,  he 
would  go  there  about  once  a  month.  Ostensibly  his 
visits  were  to  check  up  on  the  general  progress  of 
construction.  There  was  a  vigorous  idea  among  some 
of  the  men  in  charge  of  construction,  however,  that 
he  came  out  quite  as  much  to  see  that  everyone  was 
working  as  hard  as  he  should. 

He  appeared  one  mid-morning  at  construction 
headquarters.  No  one  had  known  that  he  was  in 
St.  Joseph.  But  from  his  comments  it  was  apparent 
that  he  had  arrived  early  and  had  been  on  a  self- 
conducted  tour  of  the  plant. 

"There's  a  gang  of  carpenters  over  on  the  hog- 
house,"  was  his  opening  shot.  "Of  about  twenty 
men,  not  more  than  half  a  dozen  are  really  working. 
I  think  you  need  a  new  foreman  for  them,  to  get 
the  work  out  of  'em.  And  something  is  the  matter 
with  the  bricklaying  gang;  they  haven't  got  enough 
hodcarriers  to  keep  the  masons  busy.  Somebody 
better  take  care  of  that  in  a  hurry.  If  more  of  the 
bosses  were  out  on  the  job  instead  of  in  the  office, 
this  plant  would  go  up  for  a  whole  lot  less  money." 


1 6  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

After  that,  there  was  less  chair  warming! 

Whenever  he  visited  a  branch  house  or  plant,  he 
went  without  warning.  Generally  he  came  in  the 
back  way  and  got  his  eyes  full  of  what  was  going 
on,  before  ever  he  looked  up  the  men  in  charge. 

Watchmen  were  almost  a  hobby  with  him.  He 
wanted  them  alert,  on  the  job,  and  not  to  be  talked 
out  of  doing  their  duty.  One  story  which  has  almost 
become  a  classic  among  the  men  who  knew  him  has 
to  do  with  a  visit  he  made  to  the  East  St.  Louis  plant. 

He  appeared  at  the  back  gate  one  morning  and 
tried  to  walk  past.  "Here,"  challenged  the  watch- 
man, "where  are  you  going?" 

"Isn't  this  Swift  &  Company's  plant?"  he  inquired. 

"Yes,  but  you  can't  come  in  this  way.  Have  to 
go  around  the  front,"  directed  the  watchman. 

"I'm  going  in  this  way,"  he  declared,  to  see  what 
the  watchman  would  do. 

"No,  you're  not,"  the  man  contradicted  him. 

"I  certainly  am.  It's  shorter  to  go  through  than 
to  go  around." 

"You  won't  go  through  this  gate,"  the  watchman 
announced  flatly.    "Now,  get  along  out  of  here." 

"Say,  do  you  know  who  I  am?    I'm  G.  F.  Swift." 

"I  don't  care  who  you  are.  My  orders  are  that 
nobody  comes  through  here  unless  it's  part  of  his 
job.  You  can't  go  through  here,  even  if  you  are  Mr. 
Swift — and  I  don't  think  you  are." 

"What's  your  name?" 

"Bateman." 


"A  DOLLAR  WASTED  .  .  .  .  "  17 

"All  right,  Bateman,  you'll  hear  more  of  this." 
And  he  started  for  the  front  gate. 

A  few  minutes  later  he  appeared  at  the  manager's 
desk.  He  apparently  had  something  on  his  mind, 
and  he  was  not  long  getting  it  off.  "You've  got  a 
watchman  named  Bateman  on  the  back  gate?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"Mighty  good  man.  He  wouldn't  let  me  in.  Bet- 
ter raise  his  wages.  A  man  like  that  will  save  us  a 
whole  lot  more  than  he  costs." 

There  was  another  time  when,  in  the  sweet  pickle 
cellar  at  Chicago,  a  new  watchman  found  him  poking 
into  the  barrels  and  examining  the  meats.  The  watch- 
man ordered  him  out. 

"All  right,"  said  the  chief,  without  identifying 
himself.  But  as  soon  as  the  watchman's  back  was 
turned  he  resumed  his  looking. 

In  a  minute  the  watchman  returned.  "Here,  I 
told  you  you  can't  do  that.  You'll  have  to  go  out, 
right  away."  So,  with  all  apparent  grace,  the  found- 
er of  the  business  started  out. 

But  on  the  way  he  saw  something  else  which  at- 
tracted his  attention.  It  was  not  thirty  seconds  before 
the  employee  had  him  by  the  arm — a  valiant  thing 
to  do,  since  father  towered  well  above  six  feet  while 
the  watchman  was  a  scant  five  feet  six.  "Look  here," 
was  the  man's  ultimatum.  "I've  told  you  to  get  out 
of  here,  twice.  And  you're  still  hanging  around. 
Now  get  out  before  I  put  you  out." 

Again  the  boss  did  as  he  was  told — but  this  time 


1 8  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

he  went  all  the  way.  Within  the  week  that  employee 
was  getting  two  dollars  more  in  every  pay  envelope. 
And  father  never  tired  of  telling  the  story.  To  his 
mind,  it  illustrated  the  very  qualities  of  carefulness 
and  persistence  which  he  most  desired  in  his  men. 

One  characteristic  which  seemed  almost  a  peculi- 
arity, though  actually  it  was  a  necessity  in  conserving 
his  attention  for  the  jobs  that  needed  him  most, 
was  his  disinclination  to  talk  about  departments 
which  were  making  a  profit.  "I  have  no  time  to 
talk  about  that,"  he  would  point  out  to  anyone  who 
might  undertake  it.  "I  want  to  talk  about  the  ones 
that  are  losing.    I  have  no  time  for  the  others." 

No  detail  was  too  small  to  be  worth  watching,  if 
it  bore  on  the  subject  of  waste.  He  used  to  keep 
an  eye  out  for  Swift  wagons  on  the  streets  and  when 
he  saw  a  meat  wagon,  one  quick  glance  told  him 
whether  the  meat  was  properly  covered. 

If  it  was  not,  he  was  out  in  the  street  in  a  jump. 
The  driver  was  called  down  off  his  seat,  then  and 
there  to  be  shown  exactly  how  meat  should  be  cov- 
ered. It  is  said  that  he  never  had  to  stop  the  same 
man  twice — and  in  later  years  he  rarely  had  to  stop 
any  wagons.  Swift  meat  went  out  completely  cov- 
ered by  the  tarpaulin.  Everyone  who  had  anything 
to  do  with  the  teaming  had  heard  it  too  often  to 
forget  it. 

When  the  business  was  getting  started,  he  used 
to  check  over  every  detail  himself.  One  plant  man 
tells  of  being  called  up  to  the  chief's  desk  about  the 


"A  DOLLAR  WASTED  .  .  .  .  "  19 

amount  of  beef  which  had  been  put  into  a  car.  "See 
here,"  he  was  taken  to  task,  "your  sheets  show  so 
much  beef  put  into  car  number  thus-and-so  for  this 
branch  house.  The  branch  house  sales  sheets  show 
three  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  more  beef  sold  out 
of  that  car  than  you  say  you  put  in  it.  That  means 
one  beef  went  in  without  being  tallied.  We  can't 
have  that  sort  of  thing  happening.  It  might  not  have 
been  shipped  to  one  of  our  own  branches."  He 
watched  everything  as  closely  as  that. 

A  good  many  years  later,  when  he  could  no  longer 
check  all  things  himself,  he  still  insisted  on  seeing 
the  facts  of  every  claim.  Always  he  had  on  his  desk 
several  claim  sheets  with  the  name  in  each  instance 
of  the  employee  who  had  made  the  error.  And  until 
the  business  had  grown  far  beyond  the  point  where 
anyone  else  might  have  relinquished  this,  he  used 
to  talk  personally  with  every  man  who  made  one  of 
these  errors.  The  interviews  were  usually  none  too 
pleasant — yet  they  were  talks  where  the  man  was 
taught  rather  than  threatened.  And  anyone  who  was 
called  in  because  he  made  a  claim  error  took  away 
from  G.  F.  Swift's  desk  a  comprehension  of  why 
errors  and  wastes  cannot  be  allowed,  if  a  business  is 
to  go  ahead  to  success  and  profit. 

Once,  on  a  visit  to  a  western  plant,  he  headed 
straight  for  the  oil  house  when  the  superintendent 
started  out  with  him  to  go  over  the  place.  As  soon 
as  he  was  in  the  oil  house,  he  asked  that  the  sewer 
board  be  taken  up.    And  the  sewer,  sure  enough, 


20  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

revealed  a  loss  of  oil  stock.  He  followed  up  the  line 
until  he  came  to  the  cooler  from  which  this  sewer 
drained.  His  inspection  showed  the  tierces  were 
leaky. 

The  foreman  was  sent  for.  But  he  was  not  given 
simply  a  general  reprimand  on  the  subject  of  waste. 
He  was  told,  besides  the  fact  that  the  oil  was  worth 
money,  that  a  shipment  from  this  plant  to  Rotterdam 
had  arrived  with  many  of  the  tierces  empty.  He 
heard  about  the  freight,  both  rail  and  ocean.  He 
heard  about  the  effect  which  a  shipment  of  this  sort 
has  on  a  customer  who  is  expecting  the  shipment 
for  immediate  use.  Altogether  it  was  a  lesson  in 
business  which  any  foreman  might  be  glad  of  the 
opportunity  to  receive. 

An  amusing  sequel  was  that  several  months  after- 
wards on  father's  next  visit  to  this  plant  word  got 
ahead  of  him  to  the  foreman.  So  the  foreman  shut 
off  the  sewer,  had  it  cleaned  out  and  then  forgot  to 
open  it  again. 

Once  more  the  visitor  came  in  and  had  the  floor 
board  lifted.  And  to  his  astonishment  he  found  the 
sewer  not  only  free  from  oil,  but  also  free  from  the 
water  it  should  have  been  carrying.  This  time  the 
lecture  was  not  so  restrained  in  tone. 

In  his  zeal  for  eliminating  the  needless  expenses, 
he  would  spare  himself  no  more  than  anyone  else. 
In  going  through  a  hog  killing  department  one  day, 
he  had  to  climb  up  a  dirty  ladder.  He  soiled  his 
hands,  and  an  overzealous  boy  who  accompanied  the 


"A  DOLLAR  WASTED  .  .  .  .  "  21 

party  to  carry  the  frocks  handed  the  chief  a  piece 
of  cheesecloth  to  wipe  his  hands. 

The  boss  examined  the  cloth  with  interest.  "What 
did  it  cost?     How  much  is  in  it?"  he  demanded. 

"A  cent  and  three-quarters  a  yard,"  the  superin- 
tendent told  him.  "There  are  about  four  yards  of  it 
in  that  piece." 

"Thank  you,  I  will  use  my  own  handkerchief," 
was  the  instant  decision.  "I  think  you  should  see 
that  the  company's  supplies  are  not  wasted." 

He  was  always  teaching.  His  aim  was  not  to 
make  a  man  feel  bad  for  something  which  had  gone 
to  waste,  but  rather  to  avoid  the  possibility  of  repeat- 
ing any  similar  loss.  Whether  it  was  a  lump  of  coal 
which  he  saw  projecting  from  the  cinders  in  the 
yard,  or  whether  it  was  seven  cents  worth  of  cheese- 
cloth, he  always  commented  because  he  wanted  his 
men  to  realize  the  importance  of  the  trifles. 

One  result  was  expressed  in  his  own  words,  "I 
don't  have  to  go  out  and  hire  very  many  managers. 
I  can  raise  better  than  I  can  hire."  It  is  noteworthy 
that  today,  twenty-odd  years  after  his  death,  most 
of  the  men  in  positions  of  high  responsibility  are  men 
who  were  trained  directly  under  the  founder  of  the 
business. 

His  plan  assured  him  soundly  trained  managers. 
Another  important  result,  from  his  point  of  view, 
was  that  it  avoided  the  tendency  to  five-figured  sal- 
aries, which  his  business  could  not  afford  in  the 
early  days. 


22  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

A  man  who  has  been  brought  up  from  the  ranks 
through  all  of  the  different  stages  in  one  company 
is  almost  certain  to  be  a  better  man  for  that  company 
than  a  man  who  is  hired  from  the  outside.  More- 
over, such  a  man  realizes  that  he  has  invested  a  great 
deal  of  his  time  in  the  employing  company,  just  as 
it  has  in  him.  He  recognizes  that  loyalty  is  mutual 
and  that  there  is  on  him  an  obligation  to  the  company 
just  as  the  company  has  an  obligation  to  him. 

Such  a  man  is  a  living  refutation  of  the  theory  that 
the  only  currency  which  can  enter  into  the  employee- 
employer  relation  is  that  of  cash  down  at  the  moment. 
He  recognizes  that  the  man  who  has  come  up 
through  the  ranks  has  a  greater  opportunity  to  be 
worth  a  big  salary  and  a  big  responsibility  in  future 
than  has  the  outsider.  And  in  the  long  run,  he  is 
right. 

My  father  inspired  this  loyalty  in  his  men.  They 
knew  him  as  the  man  who  had  taught  them  what 
they  knew  about  the  business,  the  man  who  had  built 
the  business  and  had  given  them  correspondingly 
more  opportunity  for  advancement  than  if  the  com- 
pany had  gone  ahead  with  less  phenomenal  strides. 

They  had  seen  him  recognize,  in  a  material  way, 
the  employer's  obligation  to  his  men.  They  acknowl- 
edged their  obligation  to  him,  as  well  as  their  per- 
sonal loyalty  to  him  as  a  man. 

It  was  well  for  him  and  for  the  business  that  they 
did.  For  despite  the  years  of  unparalleled  prosperity 
which  had  come  to  the  company  after  it  had  gained 


"A  DOLLAR  WASTED  .  .  .  .  "  23 

a  bit  of  headway,  there  was  coming  a  lean  time. 
The  business  had  grown  fast.  If  it  had  failed  to 
come  through  the  times  of  trouble,  the  verdict  must 
be  that  it  had  grown  too  fast.  As  it  is,  one  must  say 
that  it  had  grown  to  the  absolute  limit  of  safety. 


CHAPTER  II 


"WE  CANNOT  FAIL!" 

FROM  his  first  transaction  as  a  boy  until  some 
time  after  the  wearing  days  of  1893,  my  father 
never  had  enough  cash  to  handle  his  volume  of  busi- 
ness comfortably. 

It  was  not  that  he  did  not  have  during  most  of 
this  time  a  good  deal  of  capital  to  work  with.  Rather, 
his  vision  of  the  opportunities  in  his  business  ran  far 
ahead  of  the  money  which  the  business  earned  him. 
And  his  daring  led  him  to  expand  abreast  of  his 
vision  rather  than  abreast  of  his  cash. 

He  was  a  born  expansionist.  But  if  he  had  lacked 
this  tendency,  his  first  few  years  of  shipping  beef 
east  in  refrigerator  cars  would  have  implanted  it 
in  him.  For,  just  as  soon  as  he  had  succeeded  in 
delivering  his  Chicago-dressed  beef  all  sweet  and 
edible  in  the  hungry  centers  of  the  East,  he  was  able 
to  undersell  everyone  else. 

No  one  could  haul  live  cattle  east,  slaughter  them 
there,  and  sell  the  meat  for  anything  like  what  it  was 
costing  us  to  lay  down  Chicago  beef  at  the  same 
point.  We  were  not  paying  freight  on  the  inedible 
portions  of  the  animals,  nor  feeding  them  for  another 
thousand  miles  of  railroad  journey  and  standing  a 
heavy  shrinkage  in  shipment  to  boot. 

24 


"WE  CANNOT  FAIL!"  25 

The  first  working  capital  which  G.  F.  Swift  had 
was  the  twenty-five  dollars  his  father  gave  him  when 
he  was  sixteen  to  serve  the  double  purpose  of  keep- 
ing him  from  going  to  Boston  for  a  job  and  of  setting 
him  up  in  the  meat  business.  He  got  this  twenty-five 
dollars  in  1855.  He  expanded  it  to  a  good  deal  more 
by  shrewd  trading  and  hard  work. 

In  1873  he  was  "well  fixed,"  as  the  New  England 
idiom  has  it.  And  despite  that  panic  year's  losses 
to  the  three  firms  in  which  he  had  interests,  he  was 
getting  on  in  the  world. 

Yet  within  three  years,  so  thoroughly  was  he  con- 
vinced of  the  opportunities  ahead,  he  shifted  his 
scene  of  operations  to  Chicago  from  eastern  Massa- 
chusetts. Shifted  his  ideas  from  eastern  slaughtering 
to  Chicago-dressed  beef.  And  held  so  firmly  to  these 
ideas  that  his  Boston  partner,  James  A.  Hathaway, 
forced  a  dissolution  of  their  partnership. 

Hathaway  was  the  financial  man,  Gustavus  Swift 
the  live-stock  man,  of  the  firm  of  Hathaway  & 
Swift.  Its  operations  had  been  financially  com- 
fortable because  Hathaway  had  both  money  and 
belief  in  his  younger  partner's  ability. 

But  when  it  came  to  so  radical  a  change  as  my 
father  proposed,  the  older  man  would  have  none  of 
it.  Partnership  dissolved,  my  father  received  his 
share  shortly  after  he  came  to  Chicago. 

The  proceeds  to  him  were  a  little  more  than  thirty 
thousand  dollars.  It  was  all  the  money  he  had,  and 
it  did  not  look  to  him  to  be  very  much.    He  had  been 


26  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

operating  three  sizable  businesses — and  even  in 
those  days  live  cattle  cost  about  one  thousand  dollars 
a  car. 

He  had  no  illusions  that  he  could  work  com- 
fortably on  this  amount  of  money.  But  he  did  not 
let  this  fact  deter  him. 

No  one  saw  fit  to  give  him  much  competition  in 
the  early  days  at  Chicago.  The  general  attitude 
around  the  Yards  was  that  if  the  Yankee  newcomer 
was  allowed  enough  rope  he  would  hang  himself. 
His  logical  competitors,  the  big  Chicago  concerns 
engaged  in  pork  packing  and  in  the  local  fresh  meat 
business — the  concerns  which  were  his  real  competi- 
tors when  their  owners  finally  saw  how  wholly  right 
were  his  ideas — let  him  have  so  much  rope  that 
instead  of  hanging  himself  he  obtained  a  substantial 
lead. 

The  savings  through  dressing  beef  in  Chicago 
instead  of  shipping  live  cattle  east  constituted  so  large 
a  sum  per  head  that  Swift  beef,  which  was  better 
than  locally  slaughtered  beef,  could  be  sold  below 
the  market  and  still  leave  a  handsome  margin.  Once 
the  plan  was  working,  we  made  money  at  a  great 
rate. 

Obviously  he  could  not  count  on  the  rest  of  the 
world  to  leave  him  this  rich  field.  Some  day  the 
other  members  of  the  industry  would  realize  what 
was  going  on.  And  forthwith  they  would  enter  into 
competition  to  obtain  a  share  of  the  eastern  business. 

Under  these  circumstances  my  father  did  the  only 


"WE  CANNOT  FAIL!"  27 

thing  thinkable.  He  went  to  any  length  to  expand 
his  business  while  he  had  the  field  to  himself. 

He  borrowed  every  cent  he  could  to  build  more 
refrigerator  cars,  to  extend  his  plant,  to  establish  his 
distributing  machinery  in  the  East.  Every  cent  his 
business  yielded  went  back  into  it  again. 

Friends  in  the  East,  former  associates  and  competi- 
tors, were  induced  to  buy  shares  in  his  enterprise. 
And  so  it  was  that  by  the  time  the  big  Chicago  pork 
packers  awakened  to  the  profit  for  them  in  fresh  beef 
he  was  intrenched  as  firmly  as  they.  Financially, 
that  is.  In  the  beef  business  he  had  a  head  start 
which  was  never  to  be  lost. 

But  his  head  start  was  stalwartly  contested.  The 
other  concerns,  once  they  entered  the  race,  worked 
for  business.  There  was  plenty  to  be  had — what  the 
local  slaughterers  of  the  East  had  had  but  could  no 
longer  hold  against  the  economically  invulnerable 
competition  from  Chicago. 

Our  problem  was  finding  the  money  to  build  the 
equipment  necessary  for  getting  the  business  which 
was  to  be  had.  Obviously,  if  we  were  first  on  the 
ground  in  a  given  territory  we  should  always  be  the 
big  factor  there  while  the  other  concerns  would  be 
merely  our  competitors.  And  father  was  a  great  one 
for  being  the  big  factor  in  anything  he  touched. 

On  April  1,  1885,  Swift  &  Company  was  incor- 
porated for  $300,000.  On  December  1,  1886,  the 
capital  stock  was  increased  to  $3,000,000 — the  inven- 
tory showed  that  the  plant  was  worth  it.    December 


28  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

i,  1891,  saw  an  increase  to  $5,000,000.  Shortly  after- 
wards still  more  stock  was  sold,  for  a  total  capitali- 
zation of  $7,500,000. 

The  first  issue  of  stock  had  gone  pretty  much  to 
eastern  friends  and  associates — wholesale  meat  deal- 
ers, retail  butchers,  and  live-stock  shippers  for  export. 
After  a  short  while,  Swift  shares  were  universally 
recognized  as  desirable  securities.  They  were  always 
sold  directly  by  the  company  to  investors,  merely  by 
announcing  the  new  issue  and  giving  " rights"  to  the 
shareholders  of  record.  Every  share  of  stock  ever 
sold  by  the  company  has  been  sold  for  its  par  value. 

When  the  panic  of  1893  swept  down  upon  the  man 
in  charge  of  the  business,  as  it  swept  down  upon  all 
the  commerce  of  the  nation,  he  was  not  ready  for  it. 
He  was  at  the  height  of  his  last  big  period  of  expand- 
ing the  business.  Swift  plants  were  springing  up 
along  the  Missouri  River — for  if  it  was  good  to  dress 
beef  at  Chicago  and  save  hauling  live  cattle  a  thou- 
sand miles,  was  it  not  better  to  dress  it  at  Kansas  City 
and  save  fifteen  hundred?  The  new  plants  increased 
the  earnings,  but  also  they  increased  the  capital 
requirements.  Hence  when  the  panic  came,  money 
was  tight  with  us. 

My  father  had  always  regarded  his  credit,  and 
rightly  so,  as  unquestionably  his  greatest  asset.  When 
a  loan  came  due,  he  always  had  the  money  on  the 
spot — and  he  usually  asked  for  a  renewal  immedi- 
ately after  he  had  paid. 

His  credit  was  wonderfully  good.     No  wonder. 


"WE  CANNOT  FAIL!"  29 

In  the  first  place  he  had  been  building,  from  his  ear- 
liest days,  this  unbroken  record  of  prompt  payment. 
Then  there  was  his  history  of  commercial  success. 
And  not  least  of  all  was  his  personality. 

Anyone  meeting  Gustavus  F.  Swift  was  at  once 
impressed  with  the  fundamental  honesty  of  him.  It 
was  in  his  face,  in  his  manner,  in  his  whole  person- 
ality. One  knew,  instinctively,  that  here  was  a  man 
to  be  trusted  to  any  extreme.  And  besides  his  whole 
air  of  honesty,  there  was  no  question  that  he  was  sub- 
stantial. Physically,  he  was  over  six  feet  and  weighed 
about  a  hundred  and  ninety.  There  was  no  sugges- 
tion of  fatness  about  him;  he  was  bone  and  muscle. 
His  whole  appearance  was  enough  to  lend  money  on! 

When  he  first  came  to  the  Chicago  Yards,  the  East 
was  his  source  of  all  funds.  Chiefly  they  were  de- 
rived from  cattle  and  meat  sources,  from  men  who 
knew  him  in  the  stockyards  and  meat  centers  of  New 
England.  And  through  these  people  he  was  able  to 
get  substantial  lines  of  credit  from  eastern  banks,  both 
through  personal  calls  and  by  correspondence.  Swift 
paper  was,  in  1893,  scattered  throughout  the  East; 
almost  every  bank  in  New  England  and  New  York 
State  had  some. 

The  large  banks,  too,  in  Chicago  and  other  centers 
had  Swift  notes  in  more  substantial  amounts.  Yet 
even  at  this  time  he  felt  himself  held  back  by  the  lack 
of  money.  He  was  so  held  back;  his  vision  raced 
ahead  so  fast  that  the  money  could  not  keep  pace. 
His  maxim  was  to  borrow  all  the  money  anyone 


30  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

would  lend  him.  He  never  turned  down  the  offer 
of  a  loan.  The  business  was  growing  too  fast  for 
that. 

The  business  was,  it  may  parenthetically  be  admit- 
ted, growing  at  a  rate  faster  than  was  altogether 
conservative.  As  I  have  said,  he  was  a  natural-born 
expansionist.  And  for  years  all  of  his  training  had 
been  for  more  expansion,  and  then  still  more  beyond 
that. 

We  went  into  the  panic,  in  May  of  1893,  owing 
about  $10,000,000  to  the  banks — a  tidy  sum  in  those 
days.  Forthwith  the  banks  evinced  the  greatest  de- 
sire to  collect  their  loans  and  not  to  renew  them. 

Here  was  the  test  of  G.  F.  Swift's  policy.  Could 
he  pay  off  these  loans,  accumulate  enough  new  bor- 
rowed money  in  hard  times  to  carry  on  his  business, 
and  emerge  unscathed?  Or  would  he  find  himself 
in  financial  difficulties  which  must  result  in  money 
loss,  perhaps  even  in  loss  of  the  management  of  the 
business?  These  questions  were  very  real — for  in 
1893  ten  million  dollars  was  not  a  sum  to  be  bandied 
lightly  about,  nor  for  that  matter  is  it  today. 

Those  who  knew  my  father  best  say  that  in  his  life 
were  dozens  of  occasions  when  almost  anyone  else  in 
the  world  would  have  quit,  but  when  he  fought  his 
way  through  the  difficulties  by  sheer  grit.  Of  all  of 
these  occasions,  1893  takes  first  place. 

For  several  months  then,  he  literally  did  not  know 
two  days  in  advance  just  where  he  was  going  to  get 
the  money  with  which  to  meet  his  obligations.  Times 


"WE  CANNOT  FAIL!"  31 

were  hard,  hard  as  ever  they  had  been  in  the  memory 
of  man.  Collections  came  only  through  everlasting 
persistence  and  even  then  they  could  not  be  relied  on. 
Several  times  the  day  was  saved  by  expedients  which 
could  have  been  devised  by  no  one  less  determined 
than  was  Gustavus  F.  Swift  that  his  business  would 
not  fail  to  meet  its  obligations,  and  promptly. 

Off  and  on,  rumors  became  current  that  Swift  and 
Company  had  failed  or  was  about  to  fail.  Always 
this  was  the  signal  for  another  lot  of  creditors  to 
descend  for  assurances.  And  always  they  received 
the  assurances  that  all  was  well,  just  as  they  always 
received  their  money  on  the  dot. 

The  president  of  one  Chicago  bank  heard  these 
rumors  and  became  badly  worried.  So  he  called 
at  the  office,  bearing  a  statement  showing  all  of  Swift 
&  Company's  notes  in  his  bank  with  amounts  and  due 
dates.  The  head  of  the  business  looked  over  the  list. 
Then  he  said: 

"I  am  sorry,  sir,  that  you  put  your  bookkeeper  to 
the  trouble  of  making  out  this  long  statement.  Are 
any  of  these  notes  due?" 

"No,  Mr.  Swift.  But  I  am  worried  about  the 
rumors  I  have  heard  about  Swift  &  Company's  finan- 
cial condition." 

"I  have  always  thought  it  was  a  pretty  good  man 
who  could  pay  his  debts  when  they  came  due,"  de- 
clared my  father.  "And  I  have  a  record  of  always 
having  paid  every  debt  when  it  came  due.  These 
notes  will  all  be  paid  when  they  come  due,  but  I  can't 


32  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

pay  you  before  then.  You  will  get  your  money  on 
time."    And  he  did. 

Gustavus  Franklin  Swift  believed  in  the  destiny 
of  his  business.  He  sincerely  believed  that  it  could 
not  fail,  for  he  would  not  let  it.  A  dozen  or  more 
times  that  summer  the  company  could  not  have  met 
its  obligations  except  for  the  superhuman  efforts  of 
its  founder. 

Practically  every  department  head  of  the  company 
had  lent  the  company  his  lifetime  savings  on  a  note 
endorsed  by  G.  F.  Swift.  Many  of  the  subordinate 
employees  had  lent  their  money,  too.  Some  of  these 
loans  were  well  up  into  five  figures;  others  were  of 
only  a  few  hundreds  of  dollars.  But  every  one  of 
them  was  made  voluntarily.  The  men  knew  their 
chief  needed  cash,  so  they  brought  him  what  they 
could. 

The  aggregate  of  these  loans  by  employees  was 
large.  The  margin  of  safety  by  which  the  company 
escaped  disaster  was,  several  times,  extremely  nar- 
row— much  narrower  than  the  margin  given  by  the 
loans  of  employees.  If  Swift  people  had  not  lent 
their  own  money,  the  business  might  not  have  come 
through. 

Small  loans  were  made  not  only  by  employees  but 
also  by  outside  friends  and  associates.  Many  a  live- 
stock commission  man  in  the  yards  had  lent  ten 
thousand  or  even  twenty-five  thousand  dollars  on  an 
endorsed  note.  Every  cent  of  the  family's  was  in  the 
business  then. 


"WE  CANNOT  FAIL!"  33 

But  my  father  gathered  in  money  not  only  from 
these  logical  sources ;  he  also  brought  in  some  goodly 
sums  from  places  of  which  no  one  else  might  have 
thought.  One  morning,  bright  and  early,  he  sent 
for  the  department  head  in  charge  of  ice  houses  and 
icing  stations.  "Do  you  know  A.  S.  Piper?"  he  de- 
manded. 

"Yes,  I  know  him  rather  well." 

"I  see  by  the  paper  that  he  had  a  big  fire  in  one 
of  his  ice  houses.  The  paper  says  it  was  fully  in- 
sured, and  that  it  was  worth  a  hundred  thousand 
dollars." 

"Yes,  I  think  the  ice  house  was  worth  fully  one 
hundred  thousand  dollars,  Mr.  Swift  And  Mr. 
Piper  would  not  slip  up  on  a  question  like  insurance." 

"Hm-m,"  his  boss  concluded.  "That  hundred 
thousand  is  too  much  money  for  him  to  have." 

"He  can  handle  one  hundred  thousand  dollars  very 
intelligently,  Mr.  Swift." 

"He  can't  handle  it  as  well  as  I  can,"  was  the  re- 
tort.   "Can  you  get  him  to  come  to  my  office?" 

Within  an  hour  or  two  the  department  head  had 
Mr.  Piper  in  the  big  front  office.  And  then,  as  the 
eyewitness  has  since  recounted  the  story,  was  dis- 
played an  urbane,  an  almost  ingratiating  manner 
which  seldom  came  to  the  surface. 

"I  have  heard  a  great  deal  about  you,  Mr.  Piper," 
he  told  his  visitor.  "Lots  of  people  will  no  doubt 
come  to  you  about  this  hundred  thousand  dollars 
which  the  fire  insurance  companies  will  pay  you. 


34  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

The  place  for  it  is  with  Swift  &  Company,  at  six  per 
cent  interest.  I  will  give  you  a  demand  note,  and 
will  endorse  it  personally.  Then  you  can  get  your 
money  when  you  want  it." 

He  got  the  money!  The  department  head  ushered 
Mr.  Piper  to  his  carriage,  and  returned  to  his  own 
desk.  An  hour  or  two  later  his  chief  sent  for  him. 
"I  suppose  you  thought  I  wouldn't  get  that  money," 
he  chuckled. 

"Yes,  sir,  that's  exactly  what  I  thought." 

"Well,  I  had  to  have  it.  I  suppose  that  if  you 
needed  that  hundred  thousand,  you'd  just  sit  around 
and  say  you  couldn't  get  it." 

"I  don't  know,  Mr.  Swift.  I  probably  would  have 
tried." 

"I'll  tell  you,  young  man,  you've  never  needed 
money  the  way  I  needed  that  money.  If  you  had, 
you'd  know  just  how  I  felt  about  it.  You'd  have  got 
it  too." 

Every  morning  during  these  times  of  stress  there 
was  laid  on  his  desk  a  sheet  showing  estimated  money 
requirements  and  estimated  receipts.  Those  docu- 
ments were  the  storm  center  of  the  business. 

The  estimated  requirements  were  inelastic.  If  a 
note  came  due,  it  came  due  and  that  was  all  there 
was  to  it.  Live  stock  had  to  be  purchased,  for  cus- 
tomers must  be  supplied  with  fresh  meat. 

Estimated  receipts  were,  however,  highly  elastic. 
Their  natural  elasticity  consisted  principally  of  their 
tendency  to  shrink.    Customers  were  not  paying  their 


'WE  CANNOT  FAIL!"  35 

bills  as  promptly  as  in  other  times;  many  of  them 
were  in  straits  which  resulted  in  their  eventual 
failure. 

To  offset  this  natural  shortage  was  my  father's  big 
task.  For  only  too  often  the  estimated  receipts  fell 
perilously  short  of  the  requirements,  and  the  actual 
receipts  fell  short  of  the  estimates.  Then  it  was  that 
he  accomplished  strokes  such  as  the  hundred-thou- 
sand-dollar loan  from  A.  S.  Piper. 

His  task  was  complicated  by  the  thick-flying  ru- 
mors of  bankruptcy.  One  prominent  company  in  the 
industry  had  failed.  Bankers  sat  on  the  edges  of 
their  chairs,  awaiting  the  next  failure. 

And  because  Swift  &  Company  had  expanded  so 
fast  and  was  spread  out  so  thin,  it  seemed  the  logical 
candidate. 

G.  F.  Swift's  handling  of  the  whole  situation  re- 
vealed to  the  pessimistic  bankers  a  consummate  finan- 
cial skill  of  which  they  had  never  suspected  him. 
For  the  whole  summer,  while  the  panic  raged,  he 
drove  coolly  along  the  edge  of  a  cliff  above  it.  Some- 
times he  had  one  wheel  part-way  over.  If  ever  he 
had  lost  his  head,  if  ever  he  had  become  careless,  he 
must  have  crashed  squarely  into  it.  How  he  ran 
along  tranquilly,  getting  the  money  somehow  on  the 
day  he  had  to  have  it  and  meeting  every  obligation 
on  the  dot,  is  one  of  the  wonder  points  in  business 
history.  Certainly  it  was  the  height  of  his  accom- 
plishment. 

Tranquilly?    Almost  always.    But  there  were  one 


36  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

or  two  occasions  when  even  his  outward  tranquility 
was  disturbed. 

One  of  these  was  at  the  time  when  the  ticker  tape 
from  the  Chicago  Board  of  Trade  carried  the  mes- 
sage that  Swift  &  Company  had  failed.  Inside  half 
an  hour  he  was  on  the  floor  of  the  board,  a  place  he 
had  probably  not  been  half  a  dozen  times  in  his  life. 
He  strode  in  the  door,  walked  to  a  table  and  rapped 
on  it  with  that  hard,  heavy  fist  of  his.  Everyone 
looked  up  except  a  few  traders  off  in  a  far  corner, 
so  he  called,  "Attention!  Attention!" 

By  this  time  he  had  the  floor.  He  raised  his  voice 
so  that  everyone  could  hear  clearly  what  he  had  to 
say:  "It  is  reported  that  Swift  &  Company  has  failed. 
Swift  &  Company  has  not  failed.  Swift  &  Company 
cannot  fail  I"  He  walked  out  in  a  dead  silence  which 
held  for  thirty  seconds  after  he  was  gone. 

Another  time  he  got  word  that  a  meeting  of  bank- 
ers had  been  called  to  consider  just  what  steps  should 
be  taken  to  put  an  end  to  all  this  uncertainty  and  to 
plan  concerted  demands  at  once  so  heavy  he  could 
not  possibly  meet  them. 

Twenty  minutes  later  any  passer-by  on  Michigan 
Avenue  might  have  seen  him  whipping  his  carriage 
horse  through  the  crowded  traffic  as  though  he  had 
the  street  to  himself.  The  least  surprised  man  pres- 
ent, he  walked  into  the  midst  of  the  bankers'  meeting 
which  had  gathered  to  bury  the  business. 

He  opened  up  without  wasting  any  time:  "You 
gentlemen  think  you  might  be  better  off  by  bringing 


"WE  CANNOT  FAIL!"  37 

financial  pressure  to  bear  on  us.  I'm  sorry,  gentle- 
men, but  we  have  to  have  more  money,  not  less.  It 
is  up  to  you  to  lend  it  to  us.  If  we  don't  get  it,  we 
go  down — and  a  good  many  of  you  go  down  with  us." 

Before  he  left  the  meeting,  he  had  increased  his 
line  of  credit — and  on  terms  which  permitted  of  no 
future  harassment.  The  bankers  who  had  met  to  call 
his  loans  increased  them! 

Yet  nothing  can  make  me  believe  that  if  he  had 
failed  with  these  men,  my  father  would  not  have 
succeeded  in  raising  enough  money  somewhere  or 
other  to  meet  any  demands  which  could  be  made  on 
him.  When  he  told  the  Board  of  Trade,  "Swift  & 
Company  cannot  fail,"  he  was  telling  what  he  felt 
to  be  the  truth.  When  he  told  the  bankers,  "If  we 
don't  get  more  money,  we  go  down,"  he  was  telling 
what  he  knew  they  believed  and  what  would  there- 
fore give  him  the  greatest  leverage  on  them  for  in- 
creased loans. 

Periodically,  even  today,  one  hears  or  reads  how 
this  or  that  packer  poured  millions  of  dollars  into 
Swift  &  Company  in  1893  m  order  to  save  a  gigantic 
failure.  To  the  man  who  does  not  know  the  competi- 
tive situation  which  existed  at  that  time,  this  may 
sound  reasonable.  To  anyone  who  was  in  the  heart 
of  the  industry  at  that  time  it  is  ridiculous.  If  we 
had  gone  out  of  existence,  or  had  even  suspended 
operations,  it  would  have  meant  millions  of  dollars 
in  increased  annual  sales  to  each  of  the  large  packers. 
That  statement  should  make  the  situation  clear. 


38  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

Actually,  during  the  whole  period,  Swift  &  Com- 
pany had  exactly  one  bit  of  assistance  from  another 
packer.  When  he  saw  ahead  a  shortage  of  money 
rather  more  stringent  than  even  the  regular  daily 
crisis,  father  arranged  that  Morris  &  Company 
should  pay  for  Swift  &  Company's  purchases  of  live 
stock  in  the  Chicago  stockyards  for  a  period  of  not 
exceeding  one  week. 

As  it  worked  out,  Morris  &  Company  paid  for  two 
days'  purchases  by  Swift  &  Company  on  the  Chicago 
market — a  sum  not  over  one  hundred  thousand  dol- 
lars at  the  most.  On  the  third  day  the  "estimated 
receipts"  were  bettered  by  the  actual  receipts,  and 
Morris  &  Company  was  repaid  in  full  on  that  day. 

This  was  not  a  situation  where  Swift  &  Company 
would  have  fallen  by  the  wayside  if  the  hundred 
thousand  dollars  had  not  been  forthcoming.  A  sim- 
ple way,  but  less  desirable,  would  have  been  to  sus- 
pend purchasing  live  stock  for  a  day  or  two  and  shut 
down  the  packing  house. 

Not  only  did  we  weather  the  storm,  but  also  we 
operated  continuously  throughout — though  at  a  re- 
duced rate  of  production  because  of  the  need  for 
liquidating  inventories.  My  father  insisted  that  he 
had  to  keep  the  packing  houses  open,  even  though 
money  was  so  hard  to  get.  He  declared  he  would  not 
willingly  be  caught  short  of  product — and  he  wasn't. 

But  there  was  a  time  in  '93  when  the  shelves  were 
almost  bare  of  all  stock — by-products,  glue,  hides, 
wool,  pickled  and  smoked  meats — everything  that 


"WE  CANNOT  FAIL!"  39 

could  be  sold  for  cash.  The  head  of  the  business 
kept  firmly  to  the  idea  that  if  you  needed  money, 
there  was  no  point  in  holding  goods  in  an  effort  to 
avoid  a  loss.  He  needed  money  right  then  more  than 
he  needed  anything  else ;  he  sold  off  everything  which 
would  yield  money.  This  is  how  he  provided  the 
funds  to  pay  off  those  banks  which  were  clamoring 
for  cash. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  panic,  in  May,  we  owed 
about  ten  million  dollars  to  banks.  By  September, 
when  the  worst  of  the  storm  was  past,  the  bank  loans 
had  been  reduced  to  one  million — and  this  was  in  the 
banks  which  had  proved  themselves  ready  and  will- 
ing to  believe  in  G.  F.  Swift.  Given  another  month 
of  the  panic,  he  unquestionably  could  have  liquidated 
every  cent  of  bank  indebtedness.  As  it  was,  the  actual 
accomplishment  was  a  feat  little  short  of  unbeliev- 
able. 

Yet,  except  for  the  one  or  two  occasions  when  any- 
one would  have  lapsed  from  tranquility,  he  handled 
the  whole  job  quietly,  comfortably,  and  efficiently. 
It  was  World's  Fair  year  and  the  house  was  full  of 
visitors  all  summer.  On  a  Saturday  morning  in  June 
he  called  in  his  chief  clerk  in  charge  of  banking  mat- 
ters and  announced,  "I  am  going  away.  I  don't  want 
to  see  you  again  until  Monday."  And  he  went  out 
to  his  buggy. 

Within  half  an  hour  the  head  of  one  of  the  large 
downtown  banks  telephoned.  He  wanted  to  talk  with 
the  chief;  but  after  failing  to  get  him,  or  one  of 


40  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

several  other  people,  he  talked  with  the  financial 
clerk.  "There  is  a  rumor  downtown  that  Swift  & 
Company  has  failed  and  I  must  get  hold  of  Mr. 
Swift  very  quickly,"  he  told  the  employee.  "Even 
if  he  is  away,  you  find  him  and  get  this  word  to  him." 

The  clerk  had  a  feeling  that  his  boss  was  at  the 
World's  Fair.  So  he  set  out  for  the  Midway,  and 
walked  around  looking  for  the  familiar  tall  figure. 
Finally,  at  about  1 130,  he  found  him. 

His  boss  listened  to  his  excited  story.  Then  he 
smiled.  "I  said  I  didn't  want  to  see  you  until  Mon- 
day. I  meant  it.  The  bank  is  closed,  isn't  it,  until 
Monday?  All  right,  we'll  answer  them  on  Monday." 
With  no  more  ado  he  continued  on  his  way. 

For  while  he  was  tremendously  concerned  about 
his  firm's  credit,  he  would  never  allow  anyone  else's 
excitement  to  stampede  him.  He  personally 
instructed  the  handful  of  employees  in  the  banking 
department  that  the  duty  of  the  department  and  of 
everyone  in  it  was  to  keep  the  company's  credit  good. 
He  kept  his  finger  on  all  of  it. 

Long  after  he  was  running  a  large  and  widely  ram- 
ified business,  after  he  had  relinquished  to  subor- 
dinates duties  which  are  supremely  important,  he 
still  held  to  the  details  of  the  credit  structure.  He 
signed  all  notes,  warehouse  receipts,  and  other  docu- 
ments of  like  nature.  He  was  able  to  present  a  full 
statement  of  the  company's  financial  condition  from 
the  records  which  he  maintained. 

One  evening  early  in  the  panic  year  the  president 


"WE  CANNOT  FAIL!"  41 

of  a  large  bank  wrote  asking  for  a  statement  of  his 
assets  and  liabilities — something  which  was  a  good 
deal  less  freely  given  out  by  all  concerns  then  than 
now.  The  request  arrived  by  messenger  after  office 
hours. 

Next  morning  he  appeared  at  the  bank  with  a 
statement  made  out  in  his  own  writing.  The  state- 
ment showed  that  while  the  firm  owed  a  large  sum, 
it  was  a  long  way  from  insolvency.  He  went  over 
the  statement  with  the  bank  president  and  left  it  with 
him. 

Then  he  went  to  another  bank  and  to  another,  until 
he  had  been  to  all  five  of  the  banks  where  he  had 
considerable  amounts  borrowed.  To  each  bank  presi- 
dent, after  the  first,  he  said  just  about  this:  "You 
did  not  ask  for  this,  but  another  bank  did.  I  gave  it 
a  statement  and  I  want  to  deal  fairly.  I  have  brought 
you  one  also.    I  hope  it  will  be  satisfactory." 

He  afterwards  explained  to  someone  who  ques- 
tioned the  wisdom  of  this  move:  "There's  no  use  in 
trying  to  deal  with  a  banker  and  not  letting  him 
know  how  you  stand.  If  I  had  not  always  worked 
that  way,  I  would  not  have  received  as  good  support 
as  I  did  receive  from  the  banks  during  the  panic. 
And  if  I  had  not  submitted  that  statement  when  the 
first  bank  asked  for  it,  there  probably  would  have 
been  a  good  deal  harder  situation  a  little  later  on  than 
actually  ever  developed." 

Years  before,  when  he  was  doing  much  of  his  own 
cattle-buying,  the  market  broke  in  the  East — this  was 


42  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

in  the  very  early  days  when  he  was  still  shipping  cat- 
tle, before  he  was  slaughtering  in  Chicago.  He  saw 
an  opportunity,  with  the  consequent  cheap  prices  in 
the  Chicago  Yards,  to  get  hold  of  a  great  many  cat- 
tle and  start  them  rolling  eastward  while  everyone 
else  at  Chicago  was  holding  off  in  trepidation.  That 
would  mean  a  nice  profit  the  next  week,  when  the 
cattle  could  be  sold  in  a  strong  eastern  market. 

So  he  bought  and  bought  and  bought  some  more. 
His  weight  tickets,  which  are  a  form  of  document 
constituting  a  sight  draft  payable  at  the  buyer's  bank, 
came  rolling  into  the  National  Livestock  Bank  in 
great  quantities. 

Levi  B.  Doud  was  president  of  the  bank.  When 
the  flood  of  tickets  reached  a  disturbing  height,  he 
sent  a  boy  out  to  bring  in  G.  F.  Swift.  But  that  gen- 
tleman did  not  come  to  the  bank.  Instead,  he  kept 
right  on  buying  cattle.  A  second  boy  failed  to  bring 
him  in  and  a  third.  So  Doud  got  on  his  horse  and 
hunted  up  the  recalcitrant  customer.  He  found  him 
on  horseback,  at  the  cattle  pens. 

"You're  buying  a  lot  of  cattle,  Mr.  Swift,"  was  his 
greeting. 

"I  know  it,"  agreed  my  father.  "Weigh  'em,"  he 
said  to  a  live-stock  commission  man  he  was  with,  to 
indicate  that  he  was  buying  this  lot  too. 

"To  tell  you  the  truth,  your  tickets  have  overdrawn 
your  credit.     I'm  worrying  about  you,  Mr.  Swift." 

"Glad  to  hear  it,"  declared  his  customer  heartily. 
"I  was  worrying  a  little  myself  until  now,  but  there's 


"WE  CANNOT  FAIL!"  43 

no  use  of  two  of  us  worrying.  I'm  not  worrying  any 
more.  Good-by,  Mr.  Doud.  I've  got  to  go  over 
and  look  at  some  cattle."    And  he  rode  away. 

That  was  perhaps  a  method  not  to  be  advocated  in 
dealing  with  bankers  generally.  But  he  knew  his 
man.  In  '93,  he  was  on  the  ragged  edge  of  his  credit 
with  Levi  B.  Doud  almost  every  day. 

A  good  many  times  during  a  few  months  his  weight 
tickets  represented  a  large  share  of  the  money  in  the 
National  Livestock  Bank.  He  would  be  far  over- 
drawn at  night.  But  Doud  knew  him  as  well  as  he 
knew  Doud.  There  was  a  world  of  mutual  confi- 
dence, after  all  the  years  of  dealing. 

So,  after  3  :oo  p.m.,  when  the  day's  tickets  were 
in,  G.  F.  Swift  and  his  chief  clerk  would  go  over  to 
see  Doud.  The  three  would  sit  down  and  figure  out 
just  where  they  stood.  Then,  somehow  or  other,  they 
would  devise  a  way  to  leave  Swift's  account  in  satis- 
factory shape  overnight.  Next  day,  bright  and  early, 
part  of  the  morning  mail  receipts  of  money  would  be 
deposited — and  all  was  well  again  until  three  o'clock. 

There  were  key  banks  of  this  kind  to  which  he 
looked  for  considerable  sums  and  unusual  helpful- 
ness. But  a  large  bulk  of  his  financial  safety  lay  in 
the  fact  that  Swift  paper  was  scattered  in  small  pieces 
all  through  the  East,  which  at  that  time  was  the  only 
money-lending  section  of  the  country.  Hardly  a  bank 
east  of  Ohio  and  north  of  Virginia  which  did  not 
have  a  Swift  note  or  two — whether  it  was  a  large 
bank  with  five  hundred  thousand  dollars  or  a  small 


44  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

bank  with  fifteen  hundred.  But  in  the  widely  scat- 
tered indebtedness  lay  an  unlikelihood  of  its  all  being 
called  at  the  same  time. 

The  financial  and  credit-building  methods  all  had 
to  be  developed  by  my  father  from  his  own  experi- 
ence and  common  sense.  He  had  no  skilled  financial 
man  until  L.  A.  Carton,  an  established  dealer  in  com- 
mercial paper,  came  in  as  treasurer  along  in  the  latter 
part  of  1893.  By  that  time,  G.  F.  Swift  had  had  about 
all  he  wanted  of  financing  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  So 
he  brought  in  L.  A.  Carton  as  a  man  he  could  depend 
on  to  take  over  this  important  job. 

L.  A.  Carton's  unusual  ability  in  financing  was  of 
very  real  value  from  the  start.  He  aided  his  chief 
both  by  taking  of!  his  overburdened  shoulders  the 
whole  responsibility  of  the  corporation's  finance  and 
by  bringing  to  this  work  his  specialized  financial 
skill. 

There  is  little  question  that  we  had  been  expanding 
rather  faster  than  was  altogether  wise  when  safety  is 
considered — though  this  is  contrary  to  the  views  of 
Carton  that  my  father's  knowledge  of  every  factor  in 
the  industry  was  so  great  that  what  to  others  seemed 
too  fast  an  expansion  really  was  not.  But  L.  A.  Car- 
ton, with  his  skill  in  corporation  finance,  saw  that 
thenceforth  it  might  be  preferable  to  go  more  slowly. 
He  began  to  exert  a  conservative  influence. 

The  bigness  of  his  financial  operations  had  come 
upon  father  so  fast  that  he  hardly  realized  their 
magnitude  until  the  panic  of  1893  struck.     One  of 


"WE  CANNOT  FAIL!"  45 

the  old-timers  among  the  executives  often  tells  how 
his  chief  remarked  to  him,  on  the  first  day  that  the 
business  reached  the  new  high-water  mark  of  one 
hundred  head  of  cattle,  "If  I  could  only  kill  a  hun- 
dred cattle  a  day  regularly,  that  would  be  about  as 
big  a  business  as  I  could  ask."  Yet  in  less  than  six 
months  the  killing  gang  was  not  allowed  to  start 
work  in  the  morning  unless  a  hundred  cattle  were 
on  hand. 

To  this  same  man,  G.  F.  Swift  remarked  when 
Swift  &  Company  was  incorporated  for  three  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars  in  1885,  "It  seems  like  an 
awful  lot  of  money,  but  we  may  need  it  yet."  Just 
twenty  months  later  the  capitalization  was  increased 
to  three  millions — because  it  was  needed. 

It  was  the  great  speed  of  growth  which  caught  him 
unawares  in  1893.  He  knew  more  money  was  needed 
for  capital.  A  new  issue  of  stock  was  offered  to  the 
stockholders. 

But  it  did  not  go.  They  were  already  feeling  the 
pinch  of  the  approaching  panic.  So  was  begun  the 
long,  hard  fight  which  could  not  really  be  counted  as 
over  until  the  banks  opened  their  credit  resources 
once  more  and  the  new  stock  issue  cleared  out  in  a 
hurry. 

If  G.  F.  Swift  had  not  done  everything  exactly 
right,  all  the  way  through  those  stormy  months,  he 
must  have  gone  under.  But  he  did  everything  exactly 
right.  This  was  a  characteristic  of  his — and  a  char- 
acteristic of  the  men  who  made  good  with  him. 


CHAPTER  III 


JUST  RIGHT  OR  ALL  WRONG 

MANY  a  man  of  equal  ability  has  left  behind  to 
witness  his  prowess  no  such  structure  as  my 
father  left.  I  have  no  doubt  that  many  such  men  have 
consciously  chosen  not  to.  As  between  a  career  of 
undivided  attention  to  business  and  a  life  rounded 
out  by  a  catholicity  of  interests,  they  have  selected 
the  broader.    For  them  it  means  greater  contentment. 

No  such  choice  was  thinkable  to  G.  F.  Swift.  With 
never  a  backward  look  of  regret  for  those  pleasures 
of  life  which  by  his  choice  he  perforce  left  untasted, 
he  unhesitatingly  elected  to  be  master  of  his  own  busi- 
ness. The  cost  was  more  than  other  men  might  will- 
ingly pay.  His  whole  mind  and  heart  and  strength 
went  into  building  up  his  packing  enterprise.  Church 
and  family  alone  excepted,  he  had  little  time  or  incli- 
nation left  for  outside  interests. 

Had  he  been  less  than  unusually  able,  he  could  not 
have  succeeded  so  well  in  accomplishing  his  purpose. 
Yet  ability  could  not  by  itself  have  done  what  he  did. 
His  thoroughness  was  the  source  of  his  magic-work- 
ing dissatisfaction  with  half  measures.  Father  could 
not  be  happy  if  anything  with  which  he  was  con- 
nected functioned  short  of  one  hundred  per  cent. 

Whether  it  was  the  way  the  beef  was  dressed,  or 

46 


JUST  RIGHT  OR  ALL  WRONG  47 

the  salt  slush  left  on  icy  walks  by  a  careless  plant  engi- 
neer— he  would  go  to  the  root  of  the  trouble  and  do 
his  best  to  correct  it  for  all  time  to  come.  On  both 
of  these  subjects  I  have  heard  him  deliver  repeated 
lectures  to  employees.  And  I  cite  them  not  because 
they  were  hobbies,  but  as  random  selections  to  typify 
the  range  over  which  his  attention  wandered. 

He  was  a  crank  on  doing  things  right,  or  at  least 
some  of  his  men  thought  him  so.  Actually,  of  course, 
he  had  so  complete  a  comprehension  of  every  detail 
from  buying  the  cattle  to  running  a  wholesale  market 
that  he  saw  not  only  the  error  but  also  the  ultimate 
consequence  of  it. 

He  recognized  that  no  business  can  ever  attain  per- 
fection in  all  of  its  operations.  But  he  was  determined 
that  his  own  should  come  as  close  to  that  goal  as  could 
any.  It  is  my  sincere  conviction  that  he  carried  his 
determination  over  into  the  realm  of  accomplishment. 

When  he  found  grease  in  the  East  St.  Louis  plant's 
oil-house  sewer,  he  visualized  the  irate  oleomargarine 
maker  in  Rotterdam  sputtering  guttural  expletives 
because  many  casks  of  the  shipment  he  had  counted 
on  to  keep  his  plant  running  had  leaked  themselves 
empty  in  transit.  When  he  observed  an  Austrian 
bruise-trimmer  doing  slovenly  work  at  Kansas  City, 
he  appreciated  how  this  must  lower  the  customer's 
opinion  of  Swift  beef — and  to  him  it  made  no  differ- 
ence whether  that  quarter  of  beef  was  destined  for  the 
epicure  of  Beacon  Hill  or  the  Italian  family  of  South 
Boston.    The  inividual  error,  which  to  the  man  on 


48  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

the  job  was  of  tiny  consequence,  in  his  chief's  mind 
translated  itself  into  losing  a  good  customer — and  los- 
ing thousands  of  good  customers  if  the  error  should 
continue. 

To  the  oil-house  foreman  or  the  bruise-trimmer's 
boss,  my  father  doubtless  seemed  an  unreasonable  old 
gentleman  who  made  a  tremendous  fuss  about  very 
little.  On  every  subsequent  visit  to  East  St.  Louis 
he  lifted  the  sewer  board  of  the  oil-house  cooler. 
Quite  as  unvaryingly  on  each  inspection  in  Kansas 
City  he  stopped  to  watch  the  way  the  knife  sliced  out 
the  bruises.  Since  he  continued  checking  up  on  these 
operations  several  times  a  year  for  the  rest  of  his  life, 
to  many  of  his  people  they  doubtless  seemed  like  hob- 
bies of  his. 

Basically,  of  course,  he  comprehended  a  funda- 
mental commercial  truth:  If  everything  is  done 
right,  if  errors  are  held  below  the  errors  of  competi- 
tors, and  if  a  business  serves  an  economic  end,  then 
it  must  prosper.  He  schooled  himself  to  do  every- 
thing absolutely  right,  and  to  expect  the  same  of 
everyone  else. 

Perhaps  the  one  point  where  he  laid  the  most  em- 
phasis on  having  everything  done  absolutely  right 
was  in  cleanliness.  He  insisted  on  cleanliness  both 
because  he  liked  it — it  fitted  in  with  his  ideas  of  doing 
things  right — and  because  it  cut  down  spoilage 
materially. 

The  most  noticeable  improvement  of  the  Chicago 
packing  houses  over  the  old  local  slaughterhouses  was 


JUST  RIGHT  OR  ALL  WRONG  49 

in  cleanliness  and  sanitation.  And  father  was  the 
leader  in  this  respect. 

He  had  learned  the  lesson  when  he  was  a  local 
retail  dealer  in  meats  back  East.  In  those  days  when 
refrigeration  was  little  employed,  if  at  all,  in  the  pres- 
ervation of  fresh  meats,  he  had  found  out  that  meat 
which  is  handled  fastidiously  and  kept  in  well- 
scrubbed  containers  does  not  spoil  so  quickly  as  when 
it  is  handled  in  slovenly  fashion. 

The  principle,  of  course,  is  universal.  There  is  less 
loss  in  handling  steel  or  coal,  just  as  with  meat,  if  it  is 
kept  in  a  clean,  orderly,  well-planned  way.  In  han- 
dling perishable  foodstuffs  this  is  outstandingly  im- 
portant. 

But  cleanliness  cannot  be  obtained  without  eternal 
watchfulness.  Dirt  will  accumulate  if  vigilance  is 
relaxed.  And  the  average  human  being  seldom  con- 
siders it  worth  while  to  keep  up  the  fight. 

Proof  that  it  pays  had  come  to  him — rather  he  had 
worked  it  out — at  Clinton,  Massachusetts.  After  his 
original  start  with  twenty-five  dollars,  nineteen  of 
which  bought  a  heifer  and  yielded  a  profit  of  ten  dol- 
lars, he  had  scraped  together  a  little  capital  for  work- 
ing funds — it  was  far  from  a  fortune.  It  took  him 
fourteen  years  from  that  start  to  save  up  enough 
money  to  carry  out  any  plan  at  all  extensive. 

His  first  ambitious  enterprise  was  opening  a  large 
retail  meat  market  at  Clinton.  This  was  a  move  from 
sandy,  sparse  Cape  Cod  to  the  richer,  more  populous 
hinterland. 


So  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

There  were  already  here  two  or  three  small  meat 
markets  serving  the  local  mill  hands.  They  served, 
that  is,  by  carrying  a  meagre  stock  of  meats  which  they 
kept  in  their  ice  boxes — for  by  1869  refrigeration  was 
coming  a  little  more  generally  into  use.  When  a  cus- 
tomer stated  a  desire  for  a  given  cut,  the  market  man 
disappeared  into  the  murky  recesses  and  emerged 
either  with  a  piece  of  meat  from  which  he  cut  what 
was  desired,  or  else  with  the  information  that  he  did 
not  have  the  requested  variety  in  stock. 

There  was  no  attractive  display  and  no  effort  at 
cleanliness  beyond  what  common  sense  dictated  would 
save  on  meat  spoilage.  There  was  a  deal  of  greasi- 
ness  and  little  of  daintiness. 

My  father,  in  his  trips  around  New  England  buy- 
ing and  selling  cattle,  had  done  his  best  to  sate  his 
unquenchable  inquisitiveness  about  anything  bearing 
on  the  meat  trade.  He  had  consequently  noticed  that 
in  the  larger  cities  like  Worcester  and  Providence 
and  Boston  the  prosperous  meat  dealers  were  those 
who  made  their  stores  pleasant  and  their  service  nice. 

So  in  his  new  Clinton  market  he  put  into  effect  all 
of  his  ideas  which  seemed  practical  from  among  those 
he  had  observed  and  he  added  a  number  of  others  he 
had  never  seen  tried.  Perhaps  the  larger  cities  had 
meat  markets  as  attractive  as  his  at  Clinton.  Cer- 
tainly no  other  towns  of  that  size  had  its  equal,  in 
quality  or  size. 

To  Swift's  Market  came  wives  of  the  hungry  mill 
hands  who  made  Bigelow  Carpets  and  Lancaster 


"* 


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w  o 


JUST  RIGHT  OR  ALL  WRONG  51 

Ginghams.  They  liked  the  cleanliness  of  the  place — 
the  clean  windows,  the  clean  floors  covered  with 
clean,  fresh  sawdust,  the  neatly  scrubbed  butcher 
blocks  and  counters.  They  were  a  bit  awed  by  the 
white  marble  trays  on  which  cuts  of  meat  were  dis- 
played— but  not  too  awed  to  buy  the  meat. 

For  the  proprietor  of  this  store  deserved  his  repu- 
tation of  being  a  finicky  meat  seller.  He  insisted 
then,  just  as  he  insisted  all  of  his  life  thereafter,  that 
"good  enough"  was  never  good  enough.  He  wanted 
everything  right,  every  iota  of  it.  If  it  was  not,  then 
someone  was  in  trouble. 

The  natives  were  not  used  to  this  nicety  of  han- 
dling meat,  nor  were  they  used  to  seeing  cuts  of  meat 
on  display.  Father  displayed  those  cuts  which  he 
most  needed  to  dispose  of.  People  who  came  in 
bought  them  as  a  matter  of  course.  And  right  here 
is  where  he  learned  some  of  the  fundamentals  which 
were  to  prove  of  utmost  value  in  later  years  when 
Swift's  Market  at  Clinton  was  but  a  memory  and 
Swift  &  Company  at  Chicago  was  taking  all  of  his 
attention.  The  fundamentals  of  selling  which  he 
had  been  developing  in  his  earlier  career  and  which 
had  been  shaping  themselves  in  his  mind  came  into 
their  clear-cut  shapes  at  Clinton.  How  he  used  them 
to  develop  one  of  the  world's  largest  businesses  must 
be  reserved  for  a  subsequent  chapter. 

From  the  store  he  had  men  operating  three  meat 
wagons  which  daily  sold  over  regular  routes.  His 
own  experience  back  on   Cape   Cod  had  included 


52  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

driving  a  meat  cart  or  two  with  himself  as  sole  pro- 
prietor. Now,  however,  he  was  hiring  others  to  do 
this  for  him. 

The  carts  were  doing  a  business  of  perhaps  twenty- 
five  dollars  a  day  apiece.  The  market  was  doing 
about  fifty  a  day  over  the  counter.  And  if  you  ques- 
tion whether  thirty-five  to  forty  thousand  dollars  a 
year  was  a  substantial  volume  for  a  small-town  meat 
dealer  in  those  days,  ask  some  old  New  England 
housewife  what  her  mother  paid  for  meat  about 
1870.  For  fifteen  cents  a  good-sized  family  could 
have  a  meat  meal;  for  twenty-five  cents  the  table 
could  carry  generous  helpings  of  the  choicest  beef 
ribs  or  loins. 

Principally  it  was  cleanliness  and  the  will  to  do 
things  right  which  had  made  the  Clinton  market  such 
a  success.  These  fundamentals  are  quite  as  important 
today — more  important,  even — in  any  business  which 
deals  with  the  general  public.  Standards  have  gone 
up.  The  show  market  at  Clinton  would  be  an  alto- 
gether ordinary  market  in  any  city  of  the  same  size 
today.  Any  man  who  wants  to  stand  out  above  com- 
petition must  set  new  standards,  just  as  my  father  set 
new  standards  when  he  opened  the  Clinton  market. 

That  is  why  he  made  a  good  profit  regularly  out  of 
the  Clinton  business.  He  always  maintained  that 
if  an  operation  was  performed  correctly,  we  made 
money  by  it.  Often  after  we  had  undertaken  some 
activity  which  lost  money  for  us  and  kept  on  losing 
money,  he  would  say:  "We  lose  because  we  haven't 


JUST  RIGHT  OR  ALL  WRONG  53 

learned  yet  how  to  do  it.  When  we  know  how  to  do 
it  right,  we'll  begin  to  make  it  pay.  But  you  can't 
expect  to  make  money  when  you  do  a  thing  wrong." 

So  he  was  always  checking  up,  always  looking  for 
things  that  were  not  being  done  exactly  right.  When 
he  inspected  a  plant — and  this  was  frequent  in  his 
routine — he  would  not  let  anyone  go  ahead  of  him. 
He  did  not  want  it  known  that  he  was  on  the  way. 

He  never  looked  at  the  big,  showy  things  for 
cleanliness.  He  looked  in  corners,  down  sewers, 
under  benches,  and  in  the  least  well  lighted  parts 
of  coolers. 

When  he  found  something  wrong,  sarcasm  was  his 
working  tool  for  getting  it  corrected.  "I  think  you 
ought  to  hang  an  electric  light  on  that  so  you  could 
see  it,"  he  told  the  foreman  in  charge  of  a  beef  cooler 
when  he  found  a  long,  heavy  cobweb  swinging  down 
from  the  ceiling. 

"Do  you  think  tallow's  going  down?"  he  inquired 
of  his  brother  Nat,  in  charge  of  the  mutton  cooler  at 
the  Chicago  wholesale  market.  Nat's  frock  was  very 
greasy. 

"I  don't  know,"  responded  Nathaniel. 

"Well,  I  think  it's  going  up.  If  I  was  you,  I'd 
fry  out  that  frock  right  away.  It's  a  chance  to  make 
a  good  bit  of  money." 

There  was  another  time,  when  a  new  foreman  could 
not  lay  his  hands  on  a  clean  white  frock  promptly 
after  word  reached  him  by  grapevine  telegraph  that 
"G.  F."  was  on  the  way.     So  he  slipped  out  of  his 


54  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

dirty  frock,  and  donned  a  new  tan  overcoat  of  fash- 
ionable cut. 

"Do  you  work  here?"  was  the  first  question. 

"Yes,  sir;  I'm  the  foreman." 

"I  guess  you  didn't  come  down  to  stay  all  day,"  he 
commented. 

The  foreman  needed  no  further  hint.  Off  came  his 
new  coat.  He  went  through  the  department  without 
a  frock.  And  today,  risen  to  plant  superintendent, 
he  testifies  that  not  since  then  has  he  ever  mislaid  his 
frock — nor  ever  worn  a  dirty  one.  That  sort  of 
thing,  multiplied  by  thousands,  is  a  contribution 
which  father  left  us  and  which  will  never  be  out- 
grown. For  the  men  he  trained  are  training  others 
in  the  same  ways;  and  his  lessons  are  thus  passed  on 
direct  from  one  business  generation  to  the  next. 

It  was  back  before  the  days  of  concrete  floors  that 
he  stopped,  suspiciously  eyed  the  planking,  and  asked 
the  foreman  of  the  killing  floor  at  Kansas  City: 
"How  do  you  keep  these  floors  clean?" 

"We  scrub  them  with  soap  every  night,  and  once 
a  week  with  sal  soda,"  answered  the  foreman. 

"We  advertise  cleanliness,"  observed  his  chief. 
"Use  sal  soda  every  night,"  he  directed  the  plant 
superintendent  who  was  going  through  with  him. 
And  the  foreman,  still  active  on  a  like  job,  remarks, 
"G.  F.  was  the  greatest  man  for  sal  soda  ever  I  see!" 

On  this  same  killing  floor,  on  the  same  visit,  he 
called  the  foreman's  attention  to  a  negro  cattle 
skinner  who  always  put  his  foot  on  the  inside  of  the 


JUST  RIGHT  OR  ALL  WRONG  55 

hide.  No  one  saw  anything  wrong  with  that.  "Wait 
until  they  hoist  the  carcass,"  urged  the  president. 

Sure  enough,  in  the  process  the  footprint  from  the 
inside  of  the  hide — harmless  enough  in  that  place — 
"offset"  onto  the  carcass  when  it  was  hoisted.  It 
looked  for  all  the  world  as  if  someone  had  been  stand- 
ing on  the  carcass.  And  it  was  not  a  sanitary 
practice. 

No  one  had  ever  noticed  this  before,  though  the 
negro  said  he  had  been  doing  it  ever  since  he  came 
to  work  a  year  and  a  half  before.  Only  a  man  with 
complete  grasp  of  every  detail  of  a  complex  business 
could  have  seen  why  this  was  bad  practice.  Father 
saw  in  passing  what  had  escaped  the  men  who  spent 
full  time  right  there.  And  with  his  passion  for  clean- 
liness and  for  having  everything  done  shipshape,  he 
corrected  the  situation  at  once. 

One  time  back  in  the  '90s  while  I  was  out  of  town, 
he  took  occasion  every  afternoon  for  weeks  on  end 
to  call  in  a  youngster  who  worked  under  me.  Daily 
he  lectured  him  about  the  crumbs  of  suet  on  the  out- 
side of  carcasses  dressed  in  this  youngster's  depart- 
ment. Finally  the  young  man  succeeded  in  getting 
everyone  to  brush  off  the  crumbs  of  suet.  It  was 
years  after  the  employee  became  manager  of  one  of 
our  largest  plants  that  he  discovered  for  himself  why 
the  old  gentleman  was  so  vehement  about  this.  The 
broken  tissues  of  the  crumbs  of  suet  allow  mold  spores 
to  get  a  start,  and  thus  to  depreciate  the  carcass.  G.  F. 
Swift  probably  did  not  know  this  specifically.     But 


56  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

he  knew  that  anything  perfectly  clean  and  orderly 
kept  longer  than  the  same  thing  when  mussy.  The 
suet  crumbs  did  not  belong  on  the  carcasses,  hence 
he  fussed  about  it  until  he  got  the  beef  coming 
through  right. 

In  the  early  days  he  fired  a  floorsman  at  Chicago 
for  having  dirty  arms — always  a  pet  irritation  to  him. 
But  this  floorsman  was  a  skilled  workman.  So  the 
superintendent  hired  him  back  two  years  after,  think- 
ing that  it  had  all  been  forgotten. 

Three  days  afterwards  father  was  going  through 
the  plant.  "Isn't  that  the  man  I  fired  for  dirty  arms 
a  year  or  so  ago?" 

"Yes,  Mr.  Swift." 

"All  right,  fire  him  again.  When  I  fire  anybody, 
I  want  him  to  stay  fired  until  I  vote  on  him."  Dirti- 
ness around  the  plant  was  an  unforgivable  sin. 

On  every  loading  platform  of  our  plants  stood  a 
tripe  keg.  The  boy  who  swept  off  the  platform  had 
as  part  of  his  duty  to  pick  up  any  fat  which  might  fall 
off  the  carcasses  and  put  it  in  the  tripe  keg  before 
someone  crushed  it  under  foot.  Never  did  father 
cross  a  shipping  platform  without  looking  up  and 
down  for  these  bits  of  crotch  fat.  If  one  was  found 
flattened  against  the  planking,  the  foreman  and  the 
boy  both  heard  of  it.  For  when  this  was  overlooked, 
it  crossed  two  of  his  prime  ideas — it  was  dirty  and  it 
was  wasteful.  Either  was  a  misdemeanor — the  com- 
bination constituted  a  major  crime. 

Everything  connected  with  the  handling  of  his 


JUST  RIGHT  OR  ALL  WRONG  57 

goods  was  just  right  or  else  it  was  all  wrong.  He 
allowed  no  middle  ground. 

For  example,  he  never  failed  to  look  over  the  beef 
coolers.  It  was  part  of  his  routine  every  time  he 
visited  a  plant.  He  would  don  a  frock  and  spend 
half  an  hour  or  so  squinting  down  the  long  rows  of 
beef  carcasses.  He  paid  particular  attention  to  the 
neck  fat  and  how  it  was  trimmed.  It  must  be  trimmed 
to  exactly  the  right  conformation  to  look  pleasing, 
but  there  must  not  be  a  hair's  breadth  extra  trimmed 
off.  Fat  on  the  carcass  was  worth  the  carcass  or  quar- 
ter price.  Trimmed  off,  it  was  tankage,  or,  at  best, 
oleo  oil. 

If  he  saw  a  carcass  which  looked  wrong  somehow 
as  he  squinted  down  the  long  row,  he  would  examine 
it  closely.  If  he  saw  a  dark  spot  on  the  sawdust  cov- 
ering of  the  floor,  there  was  bound  to  be  trouble. 
Things  must  be  clean;  things  must  be  done  right 
Anything  else  called  for  a  reprimand. 

When  it  came  to  the  cuts,  his  inspection  was  like- 
wise of  the  closest.  Beef  ribs  are  very  desirable  and 
bring  a  high  price.  Chuck  is  not  so  highly  thought 
of  by  the  American  housewife  and  therefore  is  less 
in  demand.  When  a  carcass  is  cut  absolutely  right, 
it  yields  nine  per  cent  rib  and  twenty-six  per  cent 
chuck.  If  the  cut  is  made  at  the  wrong  place,  the 
carcass  will  yield  perhaps  eight  per  cent  rib  and 
twenty-seven  per  cent  chuck.  He  never  lost  an 
opportunity  to  point  out  to  a  foreman  what  it  cost 
to  do  this  wrong. 


58  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

For  father  was  a  teacher,  along  with  his  insistence 
on  doing  everything  right.  I  remember  when  I  was 
nine  or  ten  years  old,  back  in  Massachusetts,  how  he 
used  to  get  me  up  sometimes  before  daylight  to  help 
him  butcher  a  steer.  My  part  was  to  hold  the  lan- 
tern. 

Boylike,  I  would  become  so  interested  in  some  side 
line  of  activity  that  I  would  forget  my  part  of  the 
job.  He  never  used  to  lose  his  temper,  even  though 
the  lantern  would  go  into  eclipse  just  at  the  moment 
when  he  most  needed  its  light.  Instead  he  would 
say:  "You'll  want  to  know  some  day  how  to  do 
what  I'm  doing  now.  Hold  the  lantern  so  that  you 
can  see.    Then  I  can  see,  too." 

He  knew  how  to  buy  cattle  and  how  to  pick  cattle 
buyers.  He  knew  that  the  only  way  to  buy  cattle 
was  by  the  most  painstaking  care  and  that  the  only 
way  to  check  up  on  the  results  was  to  look  over  the 
cattle  as  they  came  to  the  skinning  floor. 

When  father  first  came  to  Chicago,  everyone  used 
to  laugh  at  his  habit  of  riding  a  low  Texas  pony 
which  left  his  legs  dangling  almost  to  the  ground. 
He  would  ride  around  on  his  low-slung  steed  buying 
his  cattle  and  caring  little  what  anyone  else  might 
think.  He  knew  why  he  was  doing  it  and  he  knew 
he  was  right. 

In  the  first  place,  he  could  let  himself  into  a  cattle 
pen  without  bothering  to  get  off  his  horse — or  with- 
out taking  a  boy  around  with  him  to  do  this  job. 
But  more  important  still,  he  was  down  at  about  the 


JUST  RIGHT  OR  ALL  WRONG  59 

level  of  the  cattle's  backs.  He  could  reach  over  and 
feel  the  butts  of  the  cattle  to  see  whether  there  was 
any  fat  there.  A  great  many  wise  jokes  were  made 
about  this  habit  of  his. 

Finally,  however,  someone  inquired  just  why  he 
felt  the  rump  of  every  beef  animal  he  bought.  "Back 
where  I  ship  these  cattle  to,  they're  bought  that  way. 
That's  how  I  sell  'em,  and  how  I  buy  'em."  He  was 
simply  applying  at  Chicago  the  test  which  he  knew 
each  animal  would  have  to  meet  when  it  reached 
Brighton  or  Albany.  And  when  his  cattle  brought  a 
better  price  in  those  markets  than  did  other  shippers' 
cattle,  this  was  the  reason.  He  always  tried  to  find 
out  the  right  way  to  do  a  thing,  and  then  he  followed 
out  this  right  procedure  unfailingly. 

There  were  dozens,  yes  hundreds,  of  points  which 
he  had  settled  as  the  best  way  of  doing  a  thing,  and 
on  which  he  checked  up  by  personal  observation  at 
every  opportunity.  Sometimes  he  could  not  demon- 
strate the  right  way.  Nevertheless  he  knew  what  the 
wrong  way  was  and  what  the  right. 

He  stopped  one  day  in  the  Chicago  packing  house 
to  show  one  of  his  old-time  New  England  butchers 
how  to  split  a  bullock.  It  was  years  since  he  had  per- 
sonally wielded  a  cleaver  and  his  hand  had  lost  its 
cunning.  He  did  it  clumsily  and  made  a  poor  job 
of  it.  "Now,  then,  that's  not  how  to  do  it,"  he 
explained  to  the  old-timer,  "but  you  know  how  it 
should  be  done.  Do  it  the  right  way.  If  a  thing's 
worth  doing  at  all,  it's  worth  doing  right." 


6o  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

If  a  thing's  worth  doing  at  all,  it's  worth  doing 
right.  This  was  father's  creed  and  pretty  nearly  the 
whole  set  of  rules  he  ran  by.  He  repeated  that  copy- 
book maxim  thousands  of  times,  to  thousands  of  dif- 
ferent people  who  worked  for  him.  And  he  said  it 
each  time  with  the  simple  faith  and  conviction  which 
made  the  other  man  appreciate  the  basic  truth  in  the 
hackneyed  words. 

Every  detail  of  the  business  was  at  his  finger  tips. 
He  knew  cattle-dressing,  for  example,  as  well  as  any 
one  I  have  ever  encountered.  He  insisted  on  prompt 
sticking  to  prevent  dark  meat.  He  always  looked 
into  the  carcass  to  see  that  no  skirt  meat  had  been  cut 
away  with  the  viscera — for  it  is  easy  to  lose  a  quarter- 
pound  of  meat  per  animal  in  this  way,  which  really 
means  something  in  the  course  of  a  day. 

At  St.  Joseph  a  new  method  had  been  devised  for 
performing  an  operation  in  splitting  a  hog — it  con- 
sisted of  using  shears  instead  of  a  knife  to  split  the 
aitch-bone,  and  is  nowadays  standard  procedure.  But 
at  that  time  it  had  just  been  devised  and  was  to  be 
tested  out  at  Chicago  in  my  father's  presence. 

So  at  the  appointed  time  he  walked  to  the  spot  in 
the  plant  where  the  test  was  to  be  conducted.  The 
hogs  were  in  improper  shape.  Someone  had  scalded 
them  and  had  left  the  hair  on.  Without  a  word  he 
picked  up  a  knife  and  began  taking  off  the  hair. 
Everybody  else  turned  to  and  inside  a  few  minutes 
the  hogs  were  scraped. 

Then  he  walked  back  to  the  place  where  he  could 


JUST  RIGHT  OR  ALL  WRONG  61 

see  best  and  the  others  prepared  for  the  test.  The 
plant  functionaries  were  all  there.  They  showed  him 
the  new  operation,  explained  to  him  its  advantages, 
and  awaited  his  verdict. 

Not  a  word  had  he  said  from  the  time  he  saw  the 
hogs  hanging  there.  He  had  simply  worked  and 
listened. 

Now  when  the  others  had  finished  talking  and 
hung  on  his  decision  as  to  whether  the  new  method 
should  be  considered  standard  henceforth,  he  said, 
to  their  surprise: 

"You  know,  when  you're  dressing  hogs  you  ought 
to  take  the  hair  off;  you  ought,  ought  to  take  the  hair 
off.  Never  ought  to  leave  a  hog  like  that."  And  he 
walked  back  to  his  office  without  a  word  about  the 
new  method  of  cutting  the  aitch-bone. 

He  was  much  more  concerned  about  maintaining 
a  right  method  than  about  adopting  a  new  method. 
Therein  he  showed  that  common  sense  which  distin- 
guished his  ways  of  working  from  those  of  so  many 
men  of  greater  apparent  brilliance.  Once  he  had 
a  good  method  established  he  never  allowed  anyone, 
himself  included,  to  overlook  it.  He  was  ready  to 
supplant  it  at  any  time  if  a  better  method  came  his 
way.  But  he  avoided  that  common  failing  of  being 
so  busy  with  new-hatched  plans  that  he  overlooked 
the  old,  tested,  profitable  methods. 

His  everlasting  desire  that  things  be  done  right 
was  in  no  sense  confined  to  his  business.  He  felt 
exactly  the   same   way   in   everything   he   came   in 


62  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

contact  with  and  used  to  go  out  of  his  way  to  see  that 
things  were  done  as  they  should  be. 

Father  was  not  at  all  averse  to  doing  them,  if  need 
be.  He  went  to  church  regularly.  I  do  not  believe 
that  he  ever  arose  less  than  half  a  dozen  times  during 
a  service  to  raise  or  lower  a  window  or  two.  He 
wanted  the  ventilation  of  the  church  just  right,  just 
as  he  wanted  every  one  of  his  refrigerator  cars 
scrubbed  out  and  cleaned  with  live  steam  between 
trips.  It  was  not  that  he  wanted  to  be  officious — 
though  I  dare  say  a  good  many  people  thought  him 
so  in  this  respect.  Rather  it  was  his  desire  that  the 
ventilation  be  right.  Since  the  church  could  employ 
no  corps  of  workmen  to  do  the  job,  he  was  willing  to 
do  it  himself. 

He  was  always  inveighing  against  a  style  which 
was  current  for  several  years  of  wearing  black  hats 
in  the  summer  time.  "You  ought  not  to  wear  a  black 
hat  in  the  summer,"  he  would  tell  his  employees — 
or  a  caller  from  outside,  perhaps  someone  he  had 
never  seen  before  that  day.  "Black  draws  the  sun. 
You  ought  to  wear  a  light  hat."  Again,  it  was  not 
his  desire  to  be  meddlesome  but  rather  his  feeling 
that  everything  ought  to  be  absolutely  right  all  of 
the  time.  If  it  was  not,  if  he  saw  anything  which 
was  not  as  it  should  be,  it  made  him  so  uncomfortable 
that  he  tried  to  set  it  right. 

At  Omaha  those  men  who  drove  their  own  horses 
to  work  (this  was  in  the  late  '90s)  maintained  a 
horse  shed  with  a  boy  in  charge  of  their  horses.    My 


JUST  RIGHT  OR  ALL  WRONG  63 

father's  natural  inquisitiveness  led  him  thither  one 
day  and  he  did  not  think  that  everything  was  as  it 
should  be.  "Your  horses  aren't  looking  very  good. 
Better  give  'em  a  bran  mash  once  in  a  while,"  he 
directed. 

It  was  almost  a  year  later  that  he  made  his  next 
visit  to  the  Omaha  plant.  As  soon  as  he  was  through 
in  the  office  and  on  the  plant  he  headed  for  the 
horse  shed.  The  same  boy  was  on  the  job.  "Your 
horses  look  better  than  last  time  I  saw  them,"  was 
his  comment.  "Guess  those  bran  mashes  helped  'em 
along."  He  had  trained  himself  never  to  forget  any- 
thing until  he  had  seen  it  to  a  successful  conclusion. 
Even  when  he  was  running  one  of  the  world's  largest 
businesses  he  could  not  overlook  the  condition  of  the 
horses  he  had  noticed  a  year  before. 

It  was  the  same  way  whether  he  was  checking  up 
on  the  loss  of  horse  blankets  at  one  of  the  Chicago 
wholesale  markets  or  making  sure  that  the  standard 
shade  of  paint  was  being  used  on  all  Swift  proper- 
ties. In  both  instances  he  was  interested  in  having 
things  exactly  right  and  also  in  saving  money.  But 
he  was  even  more  concerned  with  the  Tightness  than 
he  was  with  the  saving. 

In  overseas  selling,  especially  in  England,  he  ran 
into  trade  abuses  which  could  not  be  tolerated  by  his 
standards.  He  made,  altogether,  more  than  twenty 
trips  across  to  get  them  cleared  up. 

When  he  started  at  it,  American-dressed  meats  had 
no  show  to  be  sold  either  attractively  or  economically. 


64  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

Before  he  had  finished  with  the  job,  American  meats 
were  going  to  Great  Britain  by  the  shipload  and  he 
was  realizing  the  real  value  of  his  products.  More- 
over, a  great  deal  more  of  his  beef  was  being  sold 
there  than  of  locally  raised  beef. 

He  used  to  get  up  at  three  o'clock  every  morning 
in  London  to  go  over  into  Smithfield  Market  and 
check  up  on  what  was  being  done  with  his  product. 
He  would  row  with  any  marketman  who  tried  to 
perpetuate  a  trade  abuse.  And  eventually  he  cleaned 
the  situation  up.  He  was  quite  as  interested  in  accom- 
plishing this  because  it  was  right  as  because  it  gave 
him  another  profitable  market — though  he  did  not 
discount  the  market,  at  that. 

Father's  knowledge  of  every  part  of  the  business 
and  his  attention  to  the  most  minute  details  was  one 
of  the  secrets  of  his  operating  success.  While  the 
microscopic  eye  was  his  for  scrutinizing  little  things, 
he  had  the  telescopic  eye  for  surveying  big  things. 
And  he  never  put  on  the  wrong  lens! 


CHAPTER  IV 

TAKING  THE  EAST 

YOU  never  made  any  money  on  business  you 
didn't  do." 

This  was  the  idea  which  governed  my  father's 
whole  activity.  If  you  did  a  good  job  of  selling,  you 
had  a  chance  to  make  money — you  made  money, 
assuming  your  business  was  competently  managed. 
But  if  you  did  not  sell,  then  you  stood  no  chance  to 
make  it. 

"You  don't  make  a  profit  on  shortages,"  was 
another  of  his  maxims.  Every  morning  he  carefully 
looked  over  the  previous  day's  orders  which  could 
not  be  filled  completely  because  we  hadn't  the  goods 
in  stock  to  ship. 

I  still  follow  this  custom.  Shortages  may  readily 
cut  two  per  cent  or  even  more  off  the  total  sales.  And 
when  we  are  working  every  day  to  build  up  our  vol- 
ume at  a  profit,  I  see  little  sense  in  throwing  away 
trade. 

As  long  as  a  manager  sold  plenty,  G.  F.  Swift  stood 
by  him — even  if  he  made  no  money.  Failure  to  make 
money  on  a  big  enough  trade  simply  showed  that  a 
condition  existed  which  could  with  thought  be  cor- 
rected. 

But  failure  to  sell  put  the  man  in  a  hole.    If  he  did 

65 


66  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

not  sell  when  his  job  was  selling,  then  someone  soon 
replaced  him. 

Whenever  he  faced  the  job  of  breaking  in  where 
he  had  had  no  trade,  father  was  a  plunger.  He 
would  quickly  take  a  chance  to  lose  a  lot  of  money 
if  that  was  the  key  to  getting  a  big  trade  quickly. 

When  he  decided  to  sell  Chicago-dressed  beef  in 
New  York  City,  he  hired  a  man  there — and  forth- 
with shipped  him  a  car  of  beef,  followed  by  another 
a  week  later.  Then  in  a  few  days  he  went  to  New 
York. 

"How  are  you  making  out?"  was  the  first  question 
he  shot  at  the  salesman. 

"Awfully  bad,  Mr.  Swift.  I  lost  you  a  thousand 
dollars  on  each  of  those  two  cars." 

In  these  early  days  two  thousand  dollars  was  a 
whole  lot  of  money  to  father.  But  he  never  blinked 
an  eye.  "All  right.  You'll  do  better  next  week,  won't 
you?" 

"I  hope  so,  Mr.  Swift.  I  hate  to  promise."  The 
salesman  was  a  conscientious,  hard-working  fellow. 

"Well,  I'm  going  to  ship  you  three  cars  next  week. 
Sell  it  somehow." 

With  the  knowledge  that  he  could  count  on  a  boss 
determined  to  sell  beef  in  New  York  regardless,  the 
man  succeeded  in  disposing  of  those  three  cars  at  a 
smaller  loss  than  his  previous  record.  The  week 
after,  he  just  about  broke  even. 

Very  soon  he  was  making  a  little  money  on  each 
car  he  handled;  he  was  handling  a  goodly  number  of 


TAKING  THE  EAST  67 

cars  each  week.  His  trade  grew  so  that  it  wiped  out 
the  red-ink  figures  within  a  few  weeks  more.  In  less 
than  six  months  we  were  an  important  factor  in  the 
New  York  market — at  a  profit. 

"If  you're  going  to  lose  money,  lose  it.  But  don't 
let  'em  nose  you  out."  This  was  my  father's  standard 
policy  and  his  standard  advice:  to  the  pioneer  New 
York  man;  to  the  man  in  charge  of  our  British  beef 
business ;  to  his  brother  Edwin,  who  handled  the  east- 
ern sales  after  a  few  years ;  to  me  when  I  was  starting 
the  pork  and  provision  ends  of  the  business  a  few 
years  later. 

"Don't  let  'em  nose  you  out."  It  is  about  as  good 
advice  as  can  be  given  to  any  man  anywhere. 

After  the  first  two  or  three  cars  of  Chicago-dressed 
beef  had  been  quickly  and  profitably  sold  in  Lowell, 
Massachusetts,  the  local  market  men  agreed  to  buy 
no  more  Swift  beef — and  bound  their  bargain  by 
posting  cash  forfeits.  So  the  next  car  we  shipped  ran 
against  a  figurative  stone  wall. 

The  evening  of  the  first  day  a  telegram  came  from 
the  Lowell  agent:  "Local  butchers  combined  agree- 
ing buy  no  Chicago  beef.  No  sale  for  beef  in  Lowell. 
Shall  I  ship  the  car  to  Lawrence  or  where?" 

"Sell  it  in  Lowell,"  his  chief  wired  laconically. 

Next  evening  came  another  telegram:  "No  sales 
today.    Where  shall  I  sell  it?" 

Again  the  answer:    "Sell  it  in  Lowell." 

The  Lowell  experience  was  by  no  means  unique. 
Our  agents  in  the  East  were  having  none  too  easy  a 


68  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

time  of  it  in  many  instances.  They  met  with  opposi- 
tion, frequently  well-organized  opposition. 

Nearly  every  agent  was  applying  from  time  to  time 
for  permission  to  ship  his  beef  elsewhere.  Chicago- 
dressed  beef  was  never  going  to  be  established  any- 
where if  the  agents  were  allowed  to  give  up.  My 
father  put  a  stop  to  it,  nor  permitted  any  exceptions. 

Next  day  anyone  in  Lowell  could  buy  Swift  beef 
at  the  price  he  offered.  That  day  the  car  was  sold 
out. 

Within  less  than  a  week  the  chief  arrived  in 
Lowell.  In  rapid  succession  he  bought  a  lot,  obtained 
a  switch  track,  and  had  lumber  delivered  to  the  site. 
Next  day  a  branch-house  market  was  being  erected. 

Before  the  market  was  opened,  one  of  the  outstand- 
ing local  dealers  called  on  him.  "I  was  in  the  com- 
bination against  you,"  the  native  began.  "But  I'd 
like  to  handle  Swift  beef  as  your  local  agent." 

"We  lost  five  hundred  dollars  on  a  car  of  beef 
because  of  your  boycott,"  he  was  told.  "If  you  assume 
that  loss,  I'll  be  glad  to  have  you  as  my  partner  in 
this  market."  The  deal  was  closed  right  then.  G.  F. 
Swift  would  not  be  nosed  out,  but  he  thought  no  less 
of  the  man  who  tried  it. 

That  was  typical — except  for  the  boycott — of  how 
he  broke  into  many  an  eastern  town.  Usually  he 
began  by  having  his  beef  sold  out  of  the  car,  or  from 
the  platform  on  a  switch  track.  Then,  if  he  could, 
he  would  get  local  wholesale  dealers  to  handle  the 
beef.      Sometimes  he  had  to   put  in   salaried  men 


TAKING  THE  EAST  69 

because  he  could  not  find  the  sort  of  local  dealer  to 
whom  he  would  entrust  the  job. 

When  Chicago-dressed  beef  began  coming  on  the 
market,  the  East  had  a  real  prejudice  against  it.  To 
be  sure,  it  had  better  edible  qualities,  by  reason  of 
hanging  in  refrigeration  for  several  days  after 
slaughter,  than  had  the  fresh-killed  beef  the  east- 
erners had  been  eating. 

But  the  idea  of  eating  meat  a  week  or  more  after  it 
had  been  killed  met  with  a  nasty-nice  horror.  There 
was  about  as  much  sense  in  avoiding  Chicago-dressed 
beef  as  there  would  have  been  if  the  reformers  a  few 
years  before  had  succeeded  in  doing  away  with  sani- 
tary plumbing  in  residences.  Each  was  a  marked 
improvement  over  the  old  order.  Yet  each  was  guilty 
of  the  original  sin  of  newness. 

While  he  had  hard  situations  to  meet  in  some 
places,  in  many  others  he  was  able  to  get  the  most 
desirable  agents  merely  for  the  asking.  His  reputa- 
tion as  a  business  man  and  as  a  meat  man  was  enviable 
throughout  New  England.  Even  though  he  had  been 
away  several  years,  his  reputation  held  its  old  gleam. 
G.  F.  Swift's  word  that  his  product  was  good  and 
marketable  was  enough  for  most  of  his  friends. 

He  always  went  to  the  best  possible  local  man.  If 
this  man  could  not  be  obtained  as  agent,  then  an  em- 
ployee got  the  job. 

"There's  no  use  handling  poor  stuff  or  dealing  with 
the  wrong  sort  of  people,"  father  used  to  explain. 
"There  are  enough  people  who  want  good  stuff  and 


70  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

who  will  deal  honestly,  to  give  us  all  the  business  we 
can  handle."  This  was  his  guiding  principle  in  pick- 
ing men  or  live  stock. 

He  simply  wore  off  the  prejudice  against  western 
beef — where  he  could,  by  diplomacy.  Where  diplo- 
macy proved  inadequate,  he  resorted  to  open  warfare. 

In  Fitchburg,  for  example,  Lowe  &  Sons  was  the 
leading  firm  of  meat  dealers.  As  soon  as  he  was  able 
to  furnish  Chicago-dressed  beef  in  winter — this  was 
eighteen  months  before  the  first  successful  warm- 
weather  shipment  was  delivered  at  Fall  River — 
father  called  on  the  elder  Lowe. 

Lowe  not  only  refused  the  agency,  he  was  down- 
right unpleasant  about  it.  "I  wouldn't  sell  a  pound 
of  your  beef  if  Fitchburg  was  starving,"  he  vehe- 
mently declared. 

"All  right,  I'll  feed  Fitchburg  myself,"  was  the 
retort. 

So  my  eldest  uncle,  William  Swift,  went  to  Fitch- 
burg as  our  agent.  "G.  F."  was  a  natural  trader;  but 
William  had  trading,  old-fashioned  Yankee  trading, 
down  to  a  fine  art.  His  original  keenness  in  this  direc- 
tion had  been  sharpened  up  by  infinite  practice  and 
observation.  He  would  swap  horses  or  jack-knives — 
and  never  to  my  knowledge  did  he  get  the  worse  of  a 
trade. 

If  a  market  man  would  let  William  Swift  supply  a 
quarter  or  a  side  or  a  carcass  of  western  beef,  he 
would  trade  for  a  calf  or  a  sheep  or  a  barrel  of  pork 
— then  sell  the  swapped  stuff  for  cash.    If  a  customer 


TAKING  THE  EAST  71 

who  had  bought  on  credit  showed  signs  of  weaken- 
ing, he  would  back  up  a  wagon  and  load  up  enough 
pork  or  any  other  portable  assets  there  might  be  to 
square  accounts. 

William  Swift  supplied  competition  which  was 
real  competition.  He  cleaned  up  the  local  business  at 
a  profit,  nor  left  much  for  the  Lowes.  It  was  not 
long  before  the  old  established  firm  of  Lowe  &  Sons 
had  retired  from  business,  leaving  the  field  pretty 
much  to  Swift  beef. 

But  here,  once  more,  father  joined  forces  with  the 
enemy  after  the  defeat.  Three  of  the  Lowe  boys  came 
to  Chicago  and  went  to  work  for  him.  After  a  few 
years  they  went  back  home  to  Fitchburg  and  started 
in  again,  handling  Swift  products  exclusively.  Until 
about  fifty  years  after  the  historic  encounter  between 
G.  F.  Swift  and  the  elder  Lowe,  a  Lowe  was  manag- 
ing Swift  &  Company's  Fitchburg  branch  house. 

G.  F.  Swift  when  he  was  going  after  trade  would 
always  give  a  competitor  a  chance  to  join  with  him. 
"If  you'll  handle  my  beef,  we'll  be  partners.  If  you 
won't  handle  my  beef,  I'll  put  it  in  against  you."  This 
was  the  squarest  kind  of  competition.  And  if  it  came 
to  competition,  my  father  always  won.  He  had  the 
mighty  advantage  of  economics  on  his  side. 

Beyond  even  his  ability  as  a  packer  was  his  ability 
as  a  trader.  He  was,  to  be  sure,  a  superlative  manu- 
facturer in  his  chosen  field.  But  it  was  as  a  trader 
that  he  excelled. 

"The  best  cattle  always  sell  first,"  was  one  of  his 


72  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

maxims.  Another  was,  "Sell  of!  the  odds  and  ends 
first.    You  can  always  sell  the  top  pieces." 

He  believed  a  good  man  sold  what  was  hard  to  sell. 
He  emphasized  on  every  occasion  that  anyone  can  sell 
beef  tenderloins  and  rib  roasts  if  his  customer  has  the 
money — but  it  takes  real  ability  to  sell  a  chuck  pot- 
roast  to  a  customer  who  wants  to  buy  porterhouse 
steak.  "See  that  row  of  houses  over  there?"  he 
inquired  of  one  of  his  managers  with  whom  he  was 
in  1900  revisiting  Sandwich,  the  Cape  Cod  home 
town  of  his  youth.  "That's  where  I  used  to  peddle 
meat.  Many  a  time  the  women  came  out  of  those 
houses  to  buy — and  usually  I  sold  'em  what  I  had  the 
most  of,"  he  ended  with  a  chuckle. 

When  Texas  longhorns  were  coming  into  the  stock- 
yards in  quantity,  they  were  not  in  high  esteem. 
Texas  beef  was  not  the  most  easily  salable.  Yet  we  of 
course  slaughtered  our  share. 

My  father  visited  the  Cleveland  branch  house  once 
and  saw  perhaps  two  hundred  Texas  cattle  in  the 
cooler.  "You  needn't  say  a  word  about  those  cattle," 
he  told  the  manager.  "I  can  tell  all  about  'em. 
They're  on  your  mind,  aren't  they?" 

"You  bet  they  are." 

"If  I  had  those  cattle  on  my  mind,  I  wouldn't  have 
'em  there  by  tonight.  I'd  have  'em  on  somebody  else's 
mind  by  tonight." 

"I'd  have  to  sell  them  at  a  ridiculous  price,  Mr. 
Swift." 

"I'd  have  'em  off  my  mind." 


TAKING  THE  EAST  73 

Next  day  he  wired  from  Buffalo:  "How  many  of 
those  cattle  are  left?" 

"No  cattle  left,"  the  Cleveland  manager  tele- 
graphed back.  His  men  were  seldom  slow  to  take 
his  hints. 

G.  F.  Swift  never  believed  in  holding  to  a  thing 
because  selling  it  might  bring  a  loss.  For  one  thing, 
fresh  meat  is  perishable.  And  again,  he  believed  that 
the  best  way  to  make  money  is  to  keep  turning  over 
goods  and  capital.  He  developed  a  technique  which 
kept  his  goods  moving  at  a  rate  far  faster  than  was 
needed  to  avoid  spoilage.  I  doubt  whether  he  could 
have  built  up  his  tremendous  business  in  so  short  a 
time  otherwise.  As  it  was,  he  was  kept  scratching 
for  funds  to  run  his  business.  Because  he  made  every 
dollar  do  the  work  of  ten,  he  expanded  much  faster 
than  he  otherwise  could  have. 

Yet  with  all  of  his  desire  to  sell  and  then  sell  some 
more,  he  kept  warning  his  people  not  to  overload  a 
customer :  "Never  try  to  sell  a  customer  more  of  any- 
thing than  he  can  get  rid  of  quickly.  Try  to  sell  him 
what  he  needs,  and  then  he'll  come  back.  He'll  be  a 
better  customer  in  the  end." 

Similarly  he  held  that  smaller  customers  should  not 
be  discriminated  against  in  price.  "It  isn't  wise  to 
make  extra  low  prices  to  big  customers  on  large  quan- 
tities," was  the  way  he  told  it.  "Encourage  the  small 
customer.    Maybe  some  day  he'll  be  a  big  customer." 

And  when  he  made  a  price,  it  stuck.  Whether  he 
was  selling  or  buying,  he  stood  by  his  price. 


74  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

It  was  based  on  worth  as  he  saw  it.  Father  would 
not  change  his  price  unless  conditions  changed.  And 
often  it  angered  him  to  have  someone  come  back  to 
him  with  another  offer. 

One  of  his  fundamentals  of  selling  he  proved  out 
in  his  retail  market  at  Clinton,  back  before  he  came 
to  Chicago.  He  had  driven  a  retail  cart  on  Cape 
Cod,  selling  to  housewives  meat  which  he  had  slaugh- 
tered. Then  he  had  come  to  Brighton  market,  near 
Boston,  to  buy  his  cattle  and  drive  them  to  Barnstable 
for  slaughtering.  Next  he  devised  the  plan  of  doing 
his  slaughtering  at  Brighton,  selling  the  meat  along 
the  way  as  he  drove  home  to  Barnstable. 

He  saw  the  chance  to  branch  out  as  a  cattle  buyer. 
He  would  buy  cattle  from  the  farmers  who  raised  a 
cow  or  two  for  market,  drive  them  to  Brighton,  and 
sell  them  there. 

By  the  time  he  had  developed  through  fourteen  or 
fifteen  years  of  these  varying  but  related  experiences, 
he  opened  his  market  at  Clinton.  The  success  of  this 
market  has  already  been  described,  but  one  phase  of 
it  deserves  more  than  casual  attention.  For  one  of 
the  methods  he  devised  there  to  sell  meat  to  house- 
wives who  entered  the  shop  was  carried  over  into 
selling  meat  at  wholesale  when  we  had  wholesale 
markets  stretched  from  coast  to  coast. 

The  meat-market  men  who  had  the  Clinton  trade 
before  father  opened  his  store  there  used  to  keep  their 
meat  in  the  ice  box.    Nothing  was  on  display. 

Father  had  learned,  years  before,  that  he  had  to  sell 


TAKING  THE  EAST  75 

off  the  plate  and  chuck  and  round  if  he  was  to  make 
his  profits  from  the  animal.  And  he  had  developed 
the  knack  of  convincing  his  retail  customers  that  these 
were  the  parts  they  should  buy — if  at  the  time  it  was 
the  sort  of  meat  he  had  the  most  of.  He  knew  that 
the  ribs  and  loins  take  care  of  selling  themselves. 

So  when  he  opened  his  Clinton  market  he  dis- 
played tempting  cuts  of  meat  where  customers  could 
not  fail  to  see  them.  His  store  was  clean  in  every 
detail,  no  one  could  take  exception  to  having  the 
meats  outside  the  cooler. 

He  made  a  point  of  displaying  most  prominently 
those  cuts  which  he  needed  to  sell.  The  sirloin-steak 
customer  could  be  depended  upon  to  insist  on  getting 
sirloin  steak.  But  a  woman  who  came  in  undecided, 
and  whose  pocketbook  was  thin,  would  profit  both 
herself  and  the  store  by  buying  one  of  the  less  popular 
cuts. 

The  plan  worked — worked  beautifully.  Not  only 
did  customers  buy  the  meat  he  wanted  to  sell,  but  also 
six  times  out  of  ten  they  bought  more  than  they  had 
intended  buying.  It  was  exactly  the  principle  of 
store  display  which  has  subsequently  been  employed 
by  progressive  retail  merchants.  The  five-  and  ten- 
cent  store  chains  are  the  prominent  examples  of  using 
this  plan.  Store  display  is  the  mainspring  of  their 
success. 

In  pursuing  his  idea  of  store  display,  father  dis- 
covered that  if  you  cut  them  up,  you  sell  more  cattle 
in  a  day.     (The  same  thing  applies,  of  course,  to 


76  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

every  other  kind  of  animal.  But  in  the  early  days  at 
Chicago  he  dealt  only  in  beef.  Mutton  and  pork 
came  later.) 

When  a  retail  meat  dealer  enters  our  wholesale 
market  to  buy  something,  he  is  probably  aware  that 
he  has  a  good-sized  stock  of  meats  in  his  ice  box.  If 
he  sees  in  the  wholesale  cooler  row  upon  row  of 
whole  carcasses,  or  even  of  quarters,  he  simply 
remembers  the  general  condition  of  his  stock  and 
buys  nothing  beyond  what  he  came  in  to  get. 

But  if  he  sees  instead  a  large  assortment  of  cuts  in 
the  foreground,  with  the  larger  pieces  in  the  back- 
ground, he  begins  to  particularize  in  his  mind.  "I've 
got  too  many  rounds  left,"  he  may  think.  "But  I'm 
getting  pretty  low  on  ribs.  Better  buy  some,  so  I 
won't  be  running  out."  We  make  the  additional  sale, 
which  likewise  helps  him  to  keep  his  stock  better  bal- 
anced and  his  customers  satisfied  because  they  find  at 
his  store  exactly  what  they  want. 

"Cut  it  up  and  scatter  the  pieces,"  the  chief  would 
direct  the  manager  of  a  branch  house  where  a  cooler 
of  beef  was  not  moving  well.  "The  more  you  cut,  the 
more  you  sell."  The  advantage  of  the  small  sale  now 
instead  of  the  large  sale  later  is  obvious.  And  there  is 
the  benefit  to  the  dealer  who  is  better  able  to  turn  his 
stock  when  he  buys  cuts  instead  of  quarters.  "If  they 
won't  buy  a  whole  carcass,"  father  would  tell  a  man 
whose  sales  were  slow,  "maybe  they'll  buy  a  cut." 

Inertia  militates  against  doing  things  this  way.  It 
is  hard  work  to  cut  up  beef  carcasses  into  cuts  for 


TAKING  THE  EAST  77 

display.  The  unambitious  manager  hated  to  go  to  all 
this  trouble.  But  after  his  chief  had  jumped  him  for 
it  a  few  times  and  he  had  seen  for  himself  how  rap- 
idly meat  sold  in  cuts  when  the  carcasses  from  which 
the  cuts  came  had  not  been  selling,  even  the  laziest 
manager  learned  the  wisdom  of  the  plan. 

Once  father  dropped  in  to  see  a  man  who  had 
recently  left  us  to  take  charge  of  another  packer's 
St.  Louis  wholesale  market.  There  was  a  big  selec- 
tion of  cuts  on  hand  in  the  cooler,  well  displayed 
and  thoroughly  attractive. 

"Nice  lot  of  cuts  youVe  got  here,  Halloway,"  com- 
mented his  former  boss.  "Don't  know  when  I've  ever 
seen  a  better  line  of  cuts  in  a  cooler." 

"I  don't  think  you  ever  did,  Mr.  Swift,"  replied 
Halloway.  "But  it's  your  idea,  and  it's  doing  just 
what  you  always  said  it  would.  You  told  me  once, 
years  ago,  that  you  literally  cut  your  way  into  the 
beef  business  any  place  you  opened  a  market.  I'm 
trying  to  cut  my  way  into  it  for  these  people  here 
in  St.  Louis.  You  taught  me  that,  Mr.  Swift.  And 
I'll  tell  you,  we're  cutting  our  way  in." 

"Cut  it  up  and  scatter  it  out."  This  was  one  of  the 
principles  which  made  sales  for  my  father  and  which 
worked  quite  as  well  for  him  in  other  lines  of  activity. 
I  have  already  told  how  he  placed  Swift  financial 
paper  in  the  hands  of  every  small  bank  which  wanted 
it.  This  was  an  application  of  the  same  theory,  one 
of  the  best  ideas  which  was  ever  devised  in  our 
financing.     The  country  banks   got  accustomed   to 


78  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

having  Swift  paper,  in  small  pieces.  They  learned 
it  was  safe  stuff  to  have,  and  when  a  pinch  came  they 
held  to  it  as  if  it  were  government  bonds. 

His  financial  policies  and  his  sales  policies  touched 
in  at  least  one  other  important  point.  He  inter- 
meshed  so  completely  the  financial  interests  of  many 
important  distributors  with  the  interests  of  Swift  & 
Company  that  there  was  no  question  that  we  had 
adequate,  enthusiastic  sales  representation. 

His  chief  assistance  in  this  whole  field  of  develop- 
ing and  insuring  thorough  distribution  was  his  broth- 
er Edwin  C.  Swift.  "E.  C."  was  ten  years  younger 
and  had  been  father's  first  lieutenant  before  father 
came  to  Chicago.  He  had  managed  the  Clinton 
retail  market  after  his  elder  brother's  interests  had 
ramified,  when  the  larger  affairs  of  Hathaway  & 
Swift,  and  Anthony,  Swift  &  Company,  were  claim- 
ing G.  F.  Swift's  attention.  After  the  Clinton  retail 
market  was  sold,  E.  C.  continued  to  run  the  whole- 
sale business  at  Clinton. 

But  when  G.  F.  Swift's  whole  interest  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  Chicago  business  and  its  development 
through  the  early  stages  of  slaughtering  in  the  West 
and  shipping  to  the  East,  E.  C.  and  he  had  parted. 
E.  C.  wanted  to  see  the  country.  He  had  gone  to  the 
Pacific  Coast,  and  what  had  become  of  him  there 
no  one  in  the  family  knew.  Letters  sent  to  his  last 
address  at  San  Francisco  came  back  unclaimed. 

Once  the  technical  problems  of  the  young  enter- 
prise had  been  met  at  Chicago,  there  came  the  need 


EDWIN  C.   SWIFT 


D.   M.  ANTHONY 


TAKING  THE  EAST  79 

for  developing  eastern  trade  just  as  fast  as  was 
humanly  possible.  Father  could  not  carry  the  whole 
load;  he  could  not  be  both  in  Chicago  running  his 
company  and  in  New  England  building  up  its  trade. 
He  spent  as  much  time  in  the  East  as  he  could,  but 
it  was  not  enough,  and  he  knew  it. 

So  he  naturally  thought  of  his  brother  Edwin. 
Edwin  knew  father's  ways  of  working,  was  trust- 
worthy and  energetic,  was  a  good  mixer.  In  short, 
Edwin  was  exactly  the  man  to  take  charge  of  eastern 
affairs. 

But  where  was  E.  C?  No  one  knew.  G.  F. 
determined  to  find  him,  for  he  never  let  any  ordinary 
difficulties  stop  him. 

So  he  sent  for  a  relative  who  was  working  at  Chi- 
cago and  who  knew  Edwin  well.  He  gave  him  a 
comparatively  large  sum  of  money  and  directed:  "I 
want  you  to  find  Edwin.  Here  is  the  last  address 
we  had  for  him,  in  San  Francisco.  You'll  have  to 
trace  him  from  there.  But  you  must  find  him.  And 
when  you  find  him,  bring  him  to  me  at  once.  I  must 
have  him  come  here  to  see  me." 

After  a  good  deal  of  amateur  detective  work  in 
San  Francisco,  the  relative  found  Edwin  C.  Swift's 
name  on  the  pay  roll  of  a  railroad  contractor.  The 
gang  was  engineering  a  railroad  eastward  across  the 
mountains,  several  hundred  miles  from  San  Fran- 
cisco. The  messenger  set  out  to  find  the  gang,  and 
succeeded  after  several  weeks  of  hard  travel. 

"What  does  Stave  want  of  me?"  was   the   first 


80  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

question  Edwin  asked  after  the  messenger  had  told 
him  he  was  wanted. 

"I  don't  know,  Bub.  But  I  know  he  told  me  to 
bring  you  without  fail,  that  he  had  to  see  you  in 
Chicago.  You  know  he  wouldn't  have  gone  to  all 
this  length  to  hunt  you  up  if  he  hadn't  meant  it." 

"But  I'm  bound  here  by  a  contract,"  protested 
E.  C.  "I  can't  leave  this  job.  And  I  like  it  here, 
anyhow." 

The  messenger  stuck  to  it.  He  kept  after  E.  C. 
for  two  weeks  or  so,  and  finally  persuaded  him  to 
make  the  change.  It  took  a  while  longer  to  find 
a  man  to  replace  him,  but  eventually  they  started 
eastward.  Sharing  one  horse  to  Ogden,  two  hundred 
miles  away  from  their  start,  they  there  boarded  a 
train  and  came  to  Chicago  in  comparative  comfort. 

When  the  brothers  had  talked,  E.  C.  saw  that  the 
opportunity  in  the  East  was  just  his  sort  of  job.  So 
he  took  it  on  and  became  a  partner.  He  was  then 
twenty-nine,  my  father  thirty-nine.  Between  them 
they  developed  trade  at  a  rate  which  actually  sur- 
prised them  both. 

When  E.  C.  Swift  joined  us  at  this  time  the  parent 
concern  was  known  as  G.  F.  Swift  &  Company.  In 
the  East  it  was  selling  as  Swift  Brothers.  And  it 
was  not  so  long  afterwards  that  the  whole  business 
was  incorporated  as  Swift  &  Company,  with  three 
hundred  thousand  dollars  capital  stock — in  less  than 
two  years  to  be  increased  to  three  millions. 

Father  had  personally  gone  into  partnership  with 


TAKING  THE  EAST  81 

many  of  the  eastern  dealers  who  became  his  local 
agents.  He  and  Edwin  C.  Swift  sold  a  good  deal  of 
the  stock  to  many  of  the  eastern  dealers  who  became 
his  local  agents,  key  men  in  the  East.  Thus  with  part 
of  the  agency  owned  by  G.  F.  Swift  and  with  the 
more  important  agents  heavy  stockholders  in  the  com- 
pany, there  were  built  up  outlets  which  gave  unques- 
tioned loyalty  and  enthusiasm. 

This  solidarity  of  interest  meant  that  our  sales  went 
up  at  an  almost  unbelievable  rate.  The  important 
men  at  the  yards  had  not  believed  it  possible  for 
father  to  succeed  in  dressing  his  meat  at  Chicago  and 
selling  it  in  the  great  consuming  centers.  They  had 
been  content  to  go  ahead  with  their  own  affairs  of 
smoking  and  salting  pork,  or  of  selling  dressed  beef 
locally  around  Chicago. 

While  they  were  waiting  for  their  Yankee  competi- 
tion to  fail,  G.  F.  and  E.  C.  built  up  a  fresh  meat  busi- 
ness such  as  no  one  had  ever  dreamed  of.  The  broth- 
ers put  their  whole  minds,  hearts,  and  strength  into  its 
development.  By  the  time  the  other  packers  realized 
what  was  taking  place,  our  slaughtering  and  ship- 
ping fresh  beef  and  mutton  had  reached  a  point 
which  gave  us  a  tremendous  lead.  In  this  chosen 
field,  the  others  could  never  catch  up. 


CHAPTER  V 


MANY  A  MINUTE  .... 

BY  HIS  last-minute,  hair-breadth  methods  of 
doing,  he  saved  more  time  than  most  men  have 
altogether."  This  statement  was  made  by  a  man  who 
worked  closely  with  my  father  for  a  long  term  of 
years. 

It  brings  out,  as  well  as  can  be  brought  out,  one  of 
his  personal  working  methods  which  accounts  for  a 
great  share  of  what  G.  F.  Swift  accomplished.  It 
was  largely  through  applying  his  energies  without  a 
waste  motion  or  minute  that  he  built  up  a  large  and 
profitable  business  in  a  comparatively  short  time. 

I  have  known  rather  closely  a  good  many  business 
men  who  have  made  large  successes.  Most  of  them 
have  been  personally  efficient. 

They  have  applied  their  energies  in  ways  that 
brought  large  results. 

But  I  have  yet  to  see  anyone  whose  methods  of 
working  could  compare  with  my  father's.  He  made 
every  minute,  every  idea  count.  He  centered  his 
thought  and  his  time  on  his  work.  Swift  &  Com- 
pany was  the  almost  inevitable  result. 

Not  a  business  man  of  his  day  or  this  day  but  could 
profit  by  adopting  bodily  many  of  G.  F.  Swift's  work- 
ing methods.    They  were  sound  and  fundamentally 

82 


MANY  A  MINUTE  ....  S3 

simple.  Literally,  he  saved  more  time  than  any  other 
man  I  have  ever  known. 

Out  of  this  characteristic  has  grown  a  whole  fund 
of  stories — most  of  them  true — about  how  he  saved 
a  minute  here  and  five  minutes  there.  Any  old-timer 
in  the  Chicago  stockyards  can  reel  them  off  and  can 
usually  testify  that  he  personally  witnessed  part  of 
them. 

Every  Swift  employee  during  G.  F.  Swift's  life- 
time knew,  for  instance,  that  if  he  ever  saw  the  chief's 
horse  and  buggy  pulled  up  at  a  railroad  crossing,  de- 
serted, it  was  his  duty  to  get  in  and  drive  to  the  barn 
with  it.  And  almost  every  employee  whose  duties 
took  him  outside  performed  this  task  on  one  occasion 
or  another. 

The  reason  was  that  thus  the  boss  saved  time. 
Then,  as  now,  long  freight  trains  poked  through  the 
yards — and  showed  that  perverse  tendency  of  freight 
trains  to  stop  on  crossings.  When  a  freight  train 
halted  G.  F.  Swift  at  a  crossing,  he  looked  to  see 
whether  the  caboose  was  about  to  pass.  If  it  was  not, 
and  he  was  near  where  he  was  going,  out  he  jumped, 
climbed  through  the  freight  train,  and  left  his  horse 
beside  the  track  to  be  put  away  by  the  first  of  his  em- 
ployees who  happened  along. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  was  a  long  way  from  his 
destination  and  a  long  train  was  passing,  he  some- 
times managed  to  signal  the  engineer  to  stop  the  train. 
He  would  step  between  the  cars  on  the  crossing,  un- 
couple them  and  signal  the  engineer  to  pull  up  a  few 


84  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

feet.  Then  he  would  drive  through,  couple  up  the 
train  again,  and  be  on  his  way.  He  would  spend  a 
minute  or  two  at  hard  work  any  time  in  order  to  save 
a  five-minute  wait. 

He  never  started  for  a  destination  until  the  elev- 
enth hour.  But  he  always  got  there  on  time.  His 
chases  after  the  "dummy,"  the  train  which  used  to 
be  the  only  fast  transportation  between  the  Yards 
and  the  Loop,  have  yielded  a  crop  of  stories  which 
might  make  a  minor  epic. 

One  man  tells  of  an  occasion  when  G.  F.  sum- 
moned him  to  Chicago  from  a  Missouri  city.  Their 
talk  was  to  start  on  the  train  which  father  had  to 
take  to  a  downtown  meeting.  And  the  visitor  occu- 
pied a  chair  in  the  private  office  until  they  should 
be  ready  to  start. 

At  ten  minutes  before  train  time  the  man  from 
the  information  desk  walked  into  the  office  and  said, 
"Dummy  leaves  in  ten  minutes,  Mr.  Swift."  There 
was  no  sign  from  the  busy  man  at  the  desk.  In  one 
minute  the  clerk  entered  and  said,  "Only  nine  min- 
utes now  for  the  dummy."  Thereafter  he  entered 
every  minute  with  his  reminder.  Finally  he  said, 
"Only  four  minutes  now,  Mr.  Swift.  You'll  miss 
the  dummy." 

"I'll  miss  no  dummy,"  retorted  his  chief,  leaping 
into  action.  With  two  or  three  motions  he  had  gath- 
ered up  his  hat,  his  coat,  the  papers  he  needed. 
"Come  on,"  he  shouted  to  the  astonished  visitor — and 
down  the  stairs  they  fled  three  steps  at  a  time.    The 


MANY  A  MINUTE  ....  85 

buggy  was  waiting  at  the  door,  with  a  boy  holding 
the  horse's  bridle.  As  G.  F.  Swift  came  out  the 
door  the  horse,  experienced  at  these  affairs,  started 
off  at  a  run  with  the  two  men  swinging  into  their 
seats  as  best  they  could. 

"I  never  want  such  a  wild  ride  again,"  declares 
the  man  who  was  the  unwilling  participant.  "We 
went  through  all  that  traffic  without  even  slowing 
up.  Mr.  Swift  never  picked  up  the  reins,  just  left 
them  on  the  dash.  As  we  swung  up  to  the  station, 
the  conductor  was  starting  the  train.  'Come  on,' 
Mr.  Swift  cried,  and  jumped  to  the  ground  before 
the  horse  had  even  slowed  up.  I  scrambled  after, 
and  somehow  we  managed  to  catch  the  train  which 
by  this  time  was  a  few  yards  down  the  track.  Well, 
I  didn't  miss  the  dummy,  did  I?'  the  chief  remarked 
triumphantly,  and  we  settled  down  to  our  business. 
With  him  it  was  apparently  all  in  the  day's  work." 

On  one  such  occasion  the  horse  swung  the  buggy 
into  a  telegraph  pole  and  wrecked  it.  Father  had 
a  dozen  close  shaves  in  his  wild  rides  to  catch  the 
dummy.  Yet  he  never  missed  it.  And  since  he  did 
not  allow  himself  to  become  in  the  least  ruffled  by 
his  hurry,  he  lost  nothing  to  offset  the  time  that  he 
saved  in  this  way. 

When  he  went  to  catch  a  street  car,  his  driver  was 
never  allowed  to  stop  for  the  first  car.  Instead,  the 
horse  was  speeded  up  and  the  next  street  car  ahead 
overtaken.  Then  the  car  was  stopped  and  the  pas- 
senger got  aboard — one  car  ahead  of  where  he  would 


86  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

have  been  if  he  had  followed  the  conventional  prac- 
tice. 

His  time  saving  was  not  always  spectacular,  but 
it  was  always  at  work.  He  never  used  two  minutes 
for  any  job  if  one  would  suffice.  He  never  idled 
away  the  minute  he  had  saved.  In  handling  mail, 
for  instance,  he  plowed  through  prodigious  quanti- 
ties by  methods  which  would  serve  as  well  for  almost 
any  man  in  a  position  where  he  could  plan  his  own 
office  arrangements. 

He  was  the  best  correspondent  in  our  offices.  His 
letters  said  everything  that  needed  to  be  said  on  the 
subject  at  hand.  Yet  they  contained  never  a  useless 
phrase.  And  particularly  if  they  were  concerned 
with  other  than  business  affairs,  as  some  of  them  must 
inevitably  be,  he  cut  off  all  the  fringe  and  trimmings. 
He  went  terribly  to  the  point. 

I  recall  a  letter  written  him  by  a  friend  who  took 
perhaps  a  page  and  a  half  to  weigh  the  pros  and  cons 
of  the  candidates  in  the  pending  presidential  election. 
He  ended  by  asking  father's  opinion  as  to  who  would 
be  elected.  The  answer  has  stuck  in  my  mind  as 
a  masterpiece  of  brevity  in  letter  writing.     It  went: 

"I  am  guessing  that  Mr.  McKinley  will  be  elected. 
You  have  the  same  privilege." 

Time  was  the  great  element  in  his  life.  There 
was  nowhere  near  enough  of  it  to  let  him  do  all  the 
things  he  wanted  to  do.  He  had  no  patience  with 
anyone  or  anything  which  wasted  time,  his  time  in 
particular.     His   files,   for  example,  had  to  be  in 


MANY  A  MINUTE  ....  87 

charge  of  a  mature  man.  It  was  no  job  for  an  office 
boy  in  those  days  when  boys  commonly  handled  files. 
His  files  had  to  give  up  to  him  anything  he  wanted, 
and  at  once.  Let  thirty  seconds  elapse  between  the 
time  he  called  for  a  letter  or  document  and  the  time 
it  was  placed  on  his  desk — someone  heard  from  it, 
heard  from  it  strongly  enough  so  that  the  crime  was 
not  repeated. 

This  was  not  captiousness.  It  was  common  sense. 
He  had  no  overdeveloped  sense  of  personal  dignity. 
He  required  no  kow-towing.  But  when  he  wanted 
something  he  wanted  it  without  wasting  any  of  the 
fleeting  minutes  of  his  busy  day. 

He  wrote  his  letters  on  a  half  sheet  of  paper.  He 
wanted  others  to  be  as  considerate  in  writing  to  him. 
He  abhorred  receiving  long  letters.  Going  through 
his  morning  mail  he  would  come  to  a  long  letter. 
Some  few  of  his  managers  used  to  write  voluminous 
letters,  despite  his  best  efforts  to  break  them  of  the 
habit.  "What  does  it  say,  what  does  it  say?"  he 
would  demand  impatiently,  tossing  the  letter  to  his 
secretary.  The  secretary  as  a  regular  part  of  his 
duties  boiled  down  long  letters  and  returned  them 
to  his  chief  with  a  one-  or  two-paragraph  summary. 
Father  never  read  the  original  unless  the  summary 
indicated  some  point  on  which  he  wanted  the  fullest 
information. 

He  did  not  care  about  having  things  fixed  up  to 
look  nice  at  the  expense  of  his  time.  Once,  at  the 
height  of  his  money  troubles  of  1893,  he  called  for 


88  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

a  list  of  the  notes  outstanding.  He  wanted  it  right 
away  and  could  do  nothing  until  he  had  it.  So  he 
stood  watching  the  employee  who  was  making  out 
the  list.  Halfway  through,  a  credit  slip  was  placed 
on  the  clerk's  desk  as  notification  that  one  of  the 
notes  had  been  paid.  It  happened  to  be  a  note  which 
had  already  been  listed.  So  the  clerk  got  out  an 
eraser  and  began  to  correct  the  report. 

'Tut  down  the  net,  put  down  the  net,"  father 
almost  shouted  when  he  saw  what  the  clerk  was 
doing.  "I  want  the  net,  I  don't  want  it  pretty."  He 
heartily  disliked  any  duplication  of  work  for  appear- 
ances' sake. 

Certainly  he  was  right  about  it.  Time  is  one  asset 
which  cannot  be  increased.  And  most  of  us  waste 
tremendous  quantities  of  it  without  getting  a  com- 
mensurate return.  Nearly  every  business  man  de- 
votes an  inordinate  amount  of  time  to  "keeping  up 
appearances"  and  to  idle  talk  which  has  no  reason 
for  taking  up  his  minutes.  The  man  who  puts  to 
one  side  all  of  the  useless  frills  of  the  business  day 
and  keeps  himself  to  the  essential  affairs  quickly  finds 
he  has  performed  in  one  day  not  only  that  day's  work 
but  also  a  lot  of  back  work  which  he  has  been  in- 
tending for  weeks  to  get  at,  but  "hasn't  had  time  for." 
The  time  is  there,  but  we  waste  it. 

"When  I  realize  the  proportion  of  my  time  that 
I  used  to  waste,  it  makes  me  feel  as  though  I  have 
misspent  half  my  life,"  an  acquaintance  told  me  not 
long  ago.     He  has  in  the  course  of  twenty  years  or 


MANY  A  MINUTE  ....  89 

so  built  up  one  of  the  great  manufacturing  companies 
of  the  country.  But  he  declares  regretfully,  "If  I 
hadn't  wasted  time  so  lavishly  all  my  life — excepting 
only  the  years  when  I  was  getting  this  business  of 
mine  started — I'd  have  had  it  ten  years  further  along 
than  it  is  right  now."  His  situation  differs  from  most 
men's  only  in  that  he  recognizes  his  loss. 

Using  time  to  good  advantage  involves  principally 
setting  standards  of  what  is  worth  taking  time  for 
and  what  is  not — then  holding  up  these  self-imposed 
regulations.  G.  F.  Swift  believed  that  he  did  his 
best  work  only  when  he  had  had  adequate  sleep.  So 
he  left  word,  once  the  worst  times  of  stress  in  the 
business  were  past,  that  he  must  not  be  awakened  at 
night  for  any  calls  whatever. 

A  friend  tells  a  story  that  one  night  continued 
telephone  ringing  awakened  a  servant.  After  she 
heard  the  message,  she  rapped  on  father's  door  until 
he  responded.  "They  want  to  tell  you  that  your 
packing  house  is  burning  down,"  the  maid  said. 

"Tell  them  they  can  tell  me  about  it  at  seven 
o'clock  in  the  morning,"  was  his  reply,  and  back  he 
went  to  sleep.  He  knew  that  nothing  he  could  do 
would  impede  the  fire.  If  it  really  was  a  serious 
fire,  it  might  take  serious  planning  next  morning  to 
meet  the  emergency.  Very  well.  He  would  be  in 
better  condition  to  meet  the  emergency  after  a  good 
night's  sleep.     So  he  got  the  sleep. 

Another  time,  lightning  struck  the  barn  back  of 
the  house  and  it  began  to  burn  brightly.    This  was 


90  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

perhaps  at  ten  o'clock,  just  before  he  was  ready  to 
go  to  bed.  The  barn  was  not  far  from  his  bedroom 
window. 

With  his  superintendent,  who  lived  down  the  street 
a  way,  he  stood  in  the  street  and  watched  the  firemen 
at  work.  They  had  the  fire  stopped,  it  was  making 
no  progress.  He  yawned,  looked  at  his  watch,  and 
turned  to  the  superintendent.  "It's  half  past  ten  and 
I  guess  I'll  go  to  bed,"  he  remarked.  "You  and  the 
firemen  can  get  that  fire  put  out,  Foster.  There's 
no  reason  why  I  should  stay  up."  And  with  the 
flames  still  crackling,  he  went  to  bed  and  to  sleep 
at  once. 

He  was  all  for  business  all  of  the  time.  He  kept 
long  hours  when  there  was  occasion  for  them.  In 
the  early  days  when  it  was  a  struggle  to  make  ex- 
penses and  income  balance  he  left  the  house  at  five 
o'clock  every  morning  for  the  stockyards.  At  that 
time  he  bought  all  of  the  cattle  we  handled.  He 
didn't  need  any  help,  nor  could  he  afford  the  expense 
of  hiring  a  cattle  buyer.  By  the  time  he  had  to  spend 
his  full  time  in  the  office  and  the  packing  house,  he 
had  trained  me  into  the  cattle  buying.  For  some 
time  I  did  all  of  it.  Then  as  I  went  on  to  other  duties 
my  five  brothers  followed  me.  It  was  some  time 
before  finally  he  brought  on  Wellington  Leavitt  from 
Brighton  to  be  our  head  cattle  buyer.  By  then  the 
business  had  expanded  to  many  times  its  original  size. 

Even  after  the  business  was  well  established  and 
making  good  profits  father  did  not  altogether  give 


MANY  A  MINUTE  ....  91 

up  his  early  morning  habits.  We  had  a  good  deal 
of  trouble  with  the  treatment  accorded  our  products 
by  the  English  butchers  during  the  first  few  years 
we  were  in  the  British  markets.  He  made  several 
trips  to  England  to  correct  this  difficulty. 

During  all  of  his  time  in  London,  three  o'clock 
every  morning  saw  him  at  Smithfield  Market,  the 
focus  of  the  troubles.  The  rest  of  the  day,  after  the 
Smithfield  business  was  done,  by  nine  or  ten  o'clock, 
he  devoted  to  the  more  routine  matters  of  our  British 
agencies.  His  efforts  cleared  up  a  bad  situation 
which  might  never  have  been  cleared  up  without  his 
early  rising. 

It  was  not  only  early  in  the  morning  but  also  late 
in  the  evening  when  we  were  getting  a  start  in  Chi- 
cago. He  was  not  alone  in  this,  the  whole  family 
worked  with  him.  Mother  was  for  many  years  the 
only  bookkeeper  he  had.  He  and  she  used  every 
night  to  make  out  the  beef  sheets,  the  shipping  direc- 
tions for  next  day's  work.  A  little  later  the  boys 
had  the  same  job.  The  whole  family,  or  that  part 
of  it  which  was  sufficiently  grown  up  to  do  so,  worked 
every  evening  until  ten  or  eleven  o'clock. 

"What  time  is  it,  Mr.  Swift?"  a  workman  in- 
quired of  him  as  he  strode  through  a  workroom  in 
the  days  when  a  hundred  men  or  so  constituted  the 
whole  force. 

"You'll  know  when  the  whistle  blows!"  snapped 
the  boss,  always  in  a  hurry  and  in  no  temper  to  waste 
time  to  relieve  a  clock  watcher's  mind. 


92  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

"When  a  clerk  says  he  must  leave  the  office  because 
it  is  five  o'clock,  you'll  never  see  his  name  over  a 
front  door,"  he  has  been  quoted  as  saying.  No  won- 
der he  had  so  little  patience  with  the  clock  watcher. 

His  own  life  had  shown  him  how  necessary  is  hard 
work  in  getting  a  start.  If  it  had  not  been  for  the 
terrific  hours  he  put  in,  I  doubt  whether  G.  F.  Swift 
could  ever  have  got  the  start  he  did.  He  came  to 
Chicago  with  thirty  thousand  dollars,  which  even 
then  was  altogether  inadequate  as  capital  for  the 
smallest  packing  business.  And  broad  as  had  been 
his  experience  in  every  side  of  the  live-stock  and  meat 
business,  he  lacked  first-hand  knowledge  of  how  to 
manage  a  large  and  complex  organization. 

The  principal  figures  in  Chicago  packing  on  his 
arrival  were  Nelson  Morris  and  Philip  D.  Armour. 
Armour,  to  be  sure,  arrived  in  Chicago  the  same 
year  as  did  G.  F.  Swift.  But  he  moved  from  Mil- 
waukee, which  had  been  his  headquarters,  because 
the  Chicago  branch  of  his  business  was  rapidly  be- 
coming of  more  importance  than  the  parent  house  at 
Milwaukee. 

Both  Armour  and  Morris  had  their  organizations 
built  and  functioning.  Behind  them  were  records  of 
successfully  operating  their  large  businesses.  So 
their  credit  was  ample. 

This  was  a  hard  situation  for  the  young  Yankee 
to  face  in  the  yards.  He  never  could  have  overcome 
the  handicap  if  his  entrenched  competitors  had  real- 
ized from  the  start  just  how  serious  a  problem  he  was 


MANY  A  MINUTE  ....  93 

bound  to  make  for  them.  But  even  though  he  was 
allowed  unmolested  to  continue  on  his  way,  he  could 
never  have  accomplished  what  he  did  if  it  had  not 
been  for  the  long  hours  he  worked  and  the  intensive 
use  to  which  he  put  those  hours. 

His  taste  was  not  at  all  for  society.  His  church 
alone  excepted,  his  entire  interest  was  in  his  family 
and  his  business.  For  a  good  many  years  the  two 
pretty  much  overlapped.  His  whole  energy  and 
most  of  his  family's  energy  went  into  the  business. 

Long  into  the  evenings,  even  after  he  no  longer 
had  routine  work  to  do  at  home,  he  lived  with  it. 
He  was  a  great  man  for  continuing  his  day's  occupa- 
tion after  dinner,  unquestionably  one  of  the  things 
which  wore  him  out. 

No  doubt  there  is  a  great  difference  between  the 
types  of  man  required  to  build  a  great  business  and 
to  carry  it  on.  He  had  to  work  as  he  did  to  build 
Swift  &  Company.  After  he  had  built  it  to  a  large 
and  profitable  institution,  the  habit  of  work  was  so 
strongly  fastened  on  him  that  he  could  not  shake 
it  off.  ' 

The  rest  of  us  were  fortunate.  The  period  of 
worst  struggle,  once  over,  found  us  young  enough 
to  change  our  working  methods  to  what  accorded 
better  with  the  requirements  of  the  job.  I  have  never 
since  those  early  days  yearned  to  live  all  my  waking 
hours  with  the  business.  I  have  been  willing  to 
stay  at  the  office  as  late  as  anything  held  me,  of  course. 

But  once  a  man  gets  away  from  his  office,  it  strikes 


94  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

me  that  he  does  better  to  get  away  from  its  worries. 
His  free  hours  can  set  his  mind  off  far  enough  so 
that  when  it  comes  back  to  work  next  morning  it 
has  gained  some  perspective  on  the  job. 

This  applies  to  the  established  institution.  The 
owner  of  an  enterprise  which  is  struggling  up  from 
a  tiny  start  to  attain  its  place  in  the  economic  scheme 
of  things  can  seldom  free  himself  of  worries.  A 
young  business  requires  extra  attention  just  as  a  child 
needs  more  care  than  an  adult.  But  when  it  has  come 
up  to  a  sturdy  youth,  then  it  gets  along  better  with 
less  than  excessive  hours  of  attention.  If  the  owner 
has  broken  off  the  overwork  habit  soon  enough,  he 
is  of  course  a  whole  lot  happier. 

My  father  was  self-reliant,  as  are  practically  all 
commercial  pioneers.  Moreover  he  wanted  every- 
one around  him  to  be  self-reliant.  He  had  little  use 
for  the  employee  who  had  to  have  instructions  for 
every  step  in  his  day's  work,  or  who  did  not  know 
how  to  proceed  in  an  emergency. 

He  believed  in  helping  those  who  helped  them- 
selves. He  used  to  urge  along  those  of  his  children 
who  showed  any  tendency  to  turn  the  other  cheek. 
"Go  after  him;  don't  let  him  do  that  to  you!"  he 
would  exhort  one  of  the  boys  and  stand  by  to  see 
that  his  advice  was  taken. 

The  employee  who  required  a  lot  of  attention  and 
waiting  on  did  not  interest  him  much.  He  carried 
the  same  feeling  throughout.  One  morning  as  he 
was  driving  to  the  stockyards  his  horse  slipped  and 


MANY  A  MINUTE  ....  95 

fell  on  an  icy  corner.  Half  a  dozen  of  horse  dealers 
standing  on  the  corner  rushed  to  the  rescue,  intending 
to  lift  the  horse  to  his  feet. 

"Let  him  alone,  let  him  alone,"  my  father  pro- 
tested. "If  he  can't  get  himself  up,  I  don't  want 
him."  Presently  the  horse  got  up — a  better  horse 
for  having  taken  care  of  himself. 

Absolute  honesty  like  G.  F.  Swift's  is  exceptional. 
Not  only  did  he  know  that  he  was  honest  in  all  of 
his  dealings,  everyone  who  dealt  with  him  experi- 
enced his  honesty  and  felt  perfect  assurance  in  it  as 
an  unvarying  characteristic.  The  extent  to  which 
some  people  with  whom  he  did  business  relied  on  his 
honesty  and  fairness  is  almost  unbelievable. 

Consider  one  incident.  In  the  days  when  great 
quantities  of  dressed  beef  were  going  from  North 
American  ports  to  Europe,  we  and  a  steamship  com- 
pany became  involved  in  a  dispute  involving  some- 
where above  one  million  dollars.  Settled  one  way, 
the  transaction  would  net  the  steamship  line  a  million 
dollars  less,  Swift  &  Company  a  million  dollars  more. 
The  individuals  negotiating  it  were  so  far  apart  in 
their  ideas  that  they  simply  could  not  agree  on  any- 
thing pointing  toward  a  settlement. 

It  had  all  the  ingredients  of  a  fine  lawsuit  which 
would  drag  through  the  courts  for  years,  yielding 
tremendous  fees  to  the  attorneys.  And  word  of  this 
went  to  the  steamship  line's  principals  in  England. 

These  shipping  men  knew  my  father.  They  cabled 
back:     "We    will     submit    this     to     the    personal 


g6  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

arbitration  of  G.  F.  Swift."  It  was  one  of  the  most 
startling  tributes  to  character  that  has  ever  come  to 
my  attention.  His  decision,  granting  some  things  to 
the  steamship  company  and  some  to  his  own  company 
and  arriving  at  an  award  somewhere  on  middle 
ground,  was  the  basis  on  which  the  ship  owners 
settled  without  a  question. 

G.  F.  Swift's  honesty  was  not  of  the  sort  which 
took  advantage  of  excuses  for  not  paying  over  some- 
thing which  belonged  to  somebody  else.  To  a  new 
employee  who  had  brought  him  a  question  of  refund- 
ing some  money  to  a  customer  who  did  not  even  know 
it  was  owed  him,  father  once  said:  "It  isn't  mine. 
I  find  when  it's  decided  that  money  isn't  mine,  I 
don't  have  a  very  hard  time  finding  whose  it  is." 
There's  a  whole  practical  sermon  on  honesty  in  that 
statement. 

Let  a  Swift  employee  make  a  bad  trade  for  the 
company — he  heard  from  it  strongly,  from  the  chief 
in  person.  But  once  the  trade  was  made,  it  had  to 
be  carried  through.  There  was  no  trying  to  wriggle 
out  of  it.  "Lord  help  you  if  you  tried  to  get  him 
out  of  a  bad  trade  by  short  weight  or  lower  quality!" 
remarked  an  old-timer  in  talking  over  this  charac- 
teristic of  his  chief. 

There  was  in  charge  of  an  important  department 
a  man  who  made  an  especially  bad  trade  for  the  com- 
pany on  a  tremendous  contract.  Then,  some  days 
after  he  had  been  told  a  few  things  about  his  chief's 
opinion  of  his  business  ability,  he  came  around  with 


MANY  A  MINUTE  ....  97 

the  news  that  the  contract  had  been  canceled  by  the 
purchaser,  a  governmental  institution. 

We  were  never  able  to  get  to  the  bottom  of  just 
what  had  happened.  It  had  all  the  earmarks  of 
someone  having  cut  a  sharp  corner  to  get  us  out  of 
that  contract,  and  there  was  just  one  person  likely  to 
want  to  do  it.  Not  long  after,  this  man  was  let  go. 
But  before  he  was  fired,  father  had  warned  me  about 
him.  "You  want  to  watch  that  fellow,"  he  declared. 
"The  kind  of  fellow  that'll  do  that  sort  of  thing  for 
you  will  do  it  against  you  when  it  suits  him  to." 
Anything  of  a  dishonest  sort  made  him  distrustful. 
That  the  man  would  cheat  for  us  made  him  all  the 
worse.    Cheating  has  never  been  a  Swift  policy. 

Father  detested  sham  and  "front."  Anything 
savoring  of  lying  was  distinctly  on  his  bad  book.  He 
used  to  spend  evenings  on  end  visiting  with  managers 
of  branch  houses  and  branch  packing  houses  and  with 
executives  within  the  organization.  The  visit  con- 
sisted usually  of  G.  F.  Swift's  asking  questions — ■ 
innumerable  questions — and  of  the  visitor's  trying 
to  answer  them.  He  would  go  back  and  forth  over 
the  same  ground,  coming  to  it  from  different  direc- 
tions and  checking  one  set  of  answers  against  the 
others.  If  anyone  attempted  to  temporize,  or  to 
blufl  it  out,  the  boss  was  after  him.  "Say  you  don't 
know,  say  you  don't  know,"  he  would  impatiently 
urge  the  victim  of  his  inquisition.  Once  he  had 
proved  to  his  own  satisfaction  that  the  other  man 
was  not  a  liar,  then  he  eased  up  on  the  questioning. 


98  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

If  he  found  the  man  was  a  liar,  out  of  the  company 
he  went  at  the  first  good  opportunity. 

He  would  ask  all  manner  of  questions,  many  of 
them  so  technical  that  no  man  not  an  expert  on  the 
particular  point  could  answer  it.  "What  percentage 
of  casings  are  you  saving?"  he  asked  one  branch  plant 
manager  one  night. 

"I  don't  know." 

"How  many  hogs  does  it  take  to  make  a  bundle 
of  casings?" 

"I  don't  know."  (No  one  not  specializing  on  cas- 
ings in  a  plant  could  possibly  know,  for  it  varies  with 
the  hogs.) 

"Well,  I  think  I'd  know  that  if  I  were  managing 
a  packing  house,"  he  would  admonish  the  honest  man 
who  said  "I  don't  know."  Probably  G.  F.  Swift, 
with  his  passion  for  knowing  everything  about  the 
business,  would  have  known  such  statistics  as  those 
on  casings.  But  no  plant  manager  could  be  expected 
to  know  them. 

"You  never  felt  at  ease  with  G.  F.  unless  you  knew 
him  extremely  well,"  is  the  way  one  plant  manager 
expresses  it.  "He  was  always  trying  to  pick  you  up. 
He  would  ask  you  questions  he  knew  the  answer  to, 
to  see  if  you  knew.  When  he  finally  made  up  his 
mind  that  you  knew  a  good  deal,  and  wouldn't  try 
to  bluff  him  on  the  things  you  didn't  know,  he  took 
you  into  his  confidence.  After  that  he  let  you  alone 
with  his  questions." 

His  questions  always  had  a  definite  point,  how- 


MANY  A  MINUTE  ....  99 

ever.  He  was  always  digging  for  something  he  felt 
he  needed  to  know.  "There's  no  use  fooling  our- 
selves," he  would  declare  to  a  manager  who  might 
protest  at  the  work  involved  in  finding  out  some  fact 
on  which  he  had  been  keeping  no  record.  "We 
might  as  well  find  out,  then  we'll  know — and  we 
can't  fool  ourselves." 

"G.  F.  is  the  best  auditor  I  ever  saw,"  declared  his 
brother  Edwin  C.  Swift  after  a  long  trip  with  him 
through  a  number  of  branch  houses  neither  of  them 
had  ever  seen  before.  "He  can  get  at  the  facts  with 
questions  quicker  than  anybody  I  ever  knew.  And 
after  he  gets  through  asking  questions  in  a  branch 
house,  there's  no  need  of  going  over  the  books.  G.  F. 
knows  as  much  about  it  after  an  hour's  questioning 
as  an  auditor  could  find  out  by  checking  the  books 
for  a  week." 

He  was  a  great  man  for  detail,  despite  his  grasp 
of  the  big  things  in  his  line.  He  checked  up  on  lit- 
erally hundreds  of  things  every  time  he  visited  a 
packing  house  or  office  of  Swift  &  Company.  One 
of  his  pet  items  was  working  temperature  in  the 
office. 

On  his  way  to  the  manager's  office  he  always  man- 
aged a  look  at  the  thermometer.  Coming  into  the 
packing-house  office  in  Kansas  City  one  winter  morn- 
ing when  the  steam  was  hissing,  he  saw  that  the  tem- 
perature was  eighty.  "It's  a  wonder  your  brains 
ain't  cooked,"  was  his  greeting  to  the  manager. 

Another  time  he  came  into  the  South  Omaha  office 


ioo  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

with  the  remark:  "Good  morning.    Too  hot  in  here." 

"It's  seventy  in  here,  Mr.  Swift." 

"On  what?" 

"This" — holding  up  a  thermometer  on  his  desk. 

"Is  it  reliable?" 

"Yes,  absolutely." 

"These  others  out  in  the  office  say  seventy-three, 
seventy-four,  seventy-five." 

"I  know,  but  this  one  is  right." 

"Then  what  do  you  have  'em  around  for?"  he 
protested. 

"And  you  know,"  the  man  insists  who  had  the 
inaccurate  thermometers,  "that's  the  first  time  it  had 
occurred  to  me  that  I  was  not  saving  money  by  keep- 
ing those  things  in  use!" 

A  summary  of  G.  F.  Swift's  personal  working 
methods  would  not  be  complete  without  reference  to 
his  thrifty  Yankee  ways — "his  Cape  Cod  ways,"  as 
his  managers  jocularly  called  them.  Two  little  inci- 
dents, showing  opposite  sides  of  his  character  as  it 
could  be  seen  in  a  straight  business  affair  and  in  one 
tempered  by  sympathy  for  those  in  need,  may  help 
to  sum  up  some  of  the  reasons  why  he  was  able  to 
build  what  he  built. 

His  carriage  boy  usually  went  with  him  to  hold 
his  horse  when  he  had  to  go  to  a  meeting.  Then  at 
night  father  drove  home,  to  have  the  horse  available 
for  coming  to  work  next  morning.  When  he  dis- 
missed the  boy  during  the  working  day,  he  handed 
over  a  nickel  for  carfare  to  take  the  lad  back  to  the 


MANY  A  MINUTE  ....  101 

plant.  But  when  it  was  after  hours  he  asked,  "Going 
home  or  to  the  Yards?" 

If  the  boy  said,  "Yards,"  then  he  got  a  nickel. 
If  he  said,  "Home,"  he  got  none.  Why?  Because 
it  would  have  cost  him  a  nickel  to  get  home  from 
work  anyhow.  That  was  the  frugal  side  of  G.  F. 
Swift. 

Beef  for  export  was  shipped  in  muslin  bags.  These 
bags  were  always  made  by  people  who  needed  the 
money  the  work  brought  in.  Chiefly  they  were  made 
at  home  on  ordinary  sewing  machines  by  widows 
of  workmen  from  the  stockyards.  Father,  because 
of  his  intimate  knowledge  of  the  circumstances  of  a 
great  many  back-of-the-Yards  families,  always  in- 
sisted that  he  approve  the  list  of  those  who  were  to 
get  the  work. 

One  day  a  man  in  the  purchasing  department  came 
to  the  front  office  with  a  proposal  that  beef  bags  be 
made  by  concerns  equipped  for  doing  this  sort  of 
thing  most  economically.  We  could,  it  developed, 
save  a  good  many  thousands  of  dollars  a  year  on  beef 
bags  and  on  the  related  jobs — which  went  to  the  same 
class  of  workers — of  stringing  tags  for  beef  quarters. 

"You  keep  out  of  this  bag  and  tag  business,"  father 
directed  the  employee.  "That's  something  I'm 
running." 

And  until  export  of  dressed  meat  shifted  from 
North  American  to  South  American  sources,  the  beef 
bags  were  made  and  the  beef  quarter  tags  strung  by 
the  widows  back  of  the  Yards. 


CHAPTER  VI 


"I  VOTE  NO!" 

MY  FATHER  doted  on  frequent  reports  from 
weak  departments  of  his  business.  Not  that 
he  found  actual  pleasure  in  records  which  showed  he 
was  losing  money.  But  the  problems  of  turning  a 
loser  into  a  money  maker  involved  activity  and  em- 
ploying his  best  abilities.  And  above  all  else  he  pre- 
ferred action. 

He  had  been  brought  up  on  it.  He  would  rather 
be  on  his  horse  buying  cattle  in  the  yards  than  sitting 
quietly  at  his  desk.  But  when  his  business  grew  be- 
yond the  size  which  permitted  him  to  buy  the  cattle 
and  boss  the  skinners,  he  had  to  become  a  manager 
despite  his  preference. 

His  training  had  been  where  such  things  as  re- 
ports were  scarcely  known.  His  beginnings  had  been 
small,  his  development  had  been  through  individual 
enterprises  which  were  almost  subvisible  when  com- 
pared to  Swift  &  Company  within  five  years  of  its 
start  at  Chicago.  His  inclinations  naturally  held  to 
spreading  his  time  over  just  as  much  as  possible  of 
the  physical  equipment  of  the  business,  in  the  idea 
that  only  thus  could  we  hope  to  know  what  was 
going  on. 

But  he  quickly  realized  as  the  business  sprang 

102 


"I  VOTE  NO!"  103 

up  to  unthought-of  heights  that  he  must  work  out 
other  ways  to  keep  a  finger  on  and  in  its  every 
activity. 

So  he  became  a  devotee  of  reports — weekly  re- 
ports. "You've  got  to  know  how  you  stand  every 
week,"  he  used  to  explain.  "If  you  wait  a  month, 
maybe  you're  broke."  So  he  doted  on  reports,  de- 
tailed weekly  and  brought  right  up  to  the  minute. 

His  reports  came  to  him  weekly  as  a  matter  of 
routine.  They  were  never  disposed  of  as  routine, 
however.  A  report  which  can  be  treated  by  the 
executive  as  routine  is  a  nonessential  routine,  and 
probably  is  better  discontinued. 

Above  all  else  his  favorite  statistical  diet  was  the 
reports  of  weak  departments.  His  whole  being  en- 
joyed the  sheer  difficulty  of  going  into  a  seat  of 
trouble,  digging  out  the  facts,  aligning  them,  and 
putting  things  right.  So  any  losing  department  had 
to  submit  more  frequent  and  more  complete  figures 
than  did  the  rest  of  the  business. 

The  man  responsible  for  the  loss  had  little  rest 
while  this  persisted.  G.  F.  Swift  believed  in  frequent 
reminders  and  in  prompt  corrective  measures.  If  a 
loss  was  not  stopped  quickly,  then  something  drastic 
happened. 

Once,  for  example,  all  the  meat  in  pickle  at  the 
Kansas  City  plant  went  sour.  This  meant  that  we 
lost  the  money  value  of  the  meat  and  also  the  profits 
on  orders  we  could  not  fill  because  of  the  curtailed 
supply. 


104  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

The  meat  spoiled,  of  course,  because  a  faulty  cure 
was  in  use  at  this  plant.  Most  packers  under  similar 
circumstances  would  have  reprimanded  the  manager 
and  the  man  in  charge  of  curing  so  that  the  trouble 
would  not  recur. 

Fundamentally,  however,  the  trouble  lay  deeper 
than  carelessness.  The  weakness  was  in  the  manage- 
ment for  allowing  to  continue  a  condition  which  at 
the  time  was  universal  in  the  industry. 

The  cures  for  pork  were  all  secret.  The  head  man 
at  each  plant  had  his  secret  formula.  By  paying  him 
a  large  salary,  we  obtained  his  services.  These  in- 
cluded supervising  the  curing  and  personally  mixing 
the  pickle.  And  of  course  the  product  of  every  plant 
was  different.  A  Swift  ham  from  Omaha  was 
slightly  different  from  a  Swift  ham  from  Chicago  or 
St.  Joseph  or  St.  Paul  or  Kansas  City. 

The  unfortunate  happening  at  Kansas  City  brought 
sharply  to  father's  mind  the  fundamental  unsound- 
ness of  operating  this  way.  So  he  called  a  meeting 
at  Chicago  of  the  principal  men  in  the  operating  end 
of  the  business — managers,  general  superintendents, 
and  so  on. 

When  he  had  stated  the  problem,  he  asked  for 
a  vote.  The  problem  was  essentially  that  if  we  de- 
manded that  the  formulas  be  given  to  the  company 
the  men  who  had  the  formulas  would  quit,  leaving 
us  in  difficulties.  Should  we  demand  that  they  give 
up  their  formulas,  or  should  we  continue  at  the  old 
way  of  doing? 


"I  VOTE  NO!"  ios 

Decidedly  the  men  in  that  meeting  were  opposed 
to  taking  the  bull  by  the  horns.  "No,"  voted  each 
man.    Then  the  chief  spoke. 

"You've  all  voted  no,  because  you're  afraid  to  face 
a  little  possible  trouble.  There's  no  use  dodging 
trouble,  if  you've  got  to  do  things  the  wrong  way 
to  dodge  it.  You're  wrong  on  this.  I'm  going  to 
vote  yes  and  it  will  be  yes." 

The  meeting  had,  so  it  seemed  to  many  of  the  men 
who  gathered  there,  been  called  for  no  purpose. 
They  thought  the  new  rule  might  better  have  been 
promulgated  by  a  general  order  from  Chicago.  But 
in  this,  too,  they  were  wrong. 

Father  wanted  to  hear  at  first  hand  just  what  they 
thought  about  the  proposed  plan.  He  wanted  them 
to  convince  him  if  they  were  right.  Failing  this  he 
decreed  that  the  cure  used  at  each  plant  should  be 
forwarded  to  Chicago,  the  best  of  the  formulas 
selected  and  made  standard  for  all  plants.  And  by 
deciding  this  in  the  meeting  he  let  those  men  who 
believed  sincerely  in  his  judgment  see  for  themselves 
that  he  was  basing  his  decision  on  a  principle  rather 
than  on  caprice. 

It  went  through  without  a  ripple.  The  men  in 
charge  of  curing  at  each  plant  sent  in  their  formulas, 
despite  their  many  and  lusty  threats  of  quitting.  The 
formulas  were  almost  alike  in  ingredients  and  pro- 
portions. The  standard  formula  was  worked  out  from 
these.  Only  slightly  modified  through  the  experience 
of  the  years  this  formula  is  used  today  as  the  standard 


106  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

cure  in  preparing  our  pork  products  for  market, 
including  our  Premium  Brand  of  hams  and  bacon. 

The  meeting  about  secret  formulas  was  not  the 
only  one  which  father  ended  by  voting  yes,  when 
the  rest  of  the  meeting  had  voted  unanimously  no. 
Because  he  was  dominant  in  the  business,  because 
his  ideas  generally  prevailed — of  this,  more  later — 
his  people  from  time  to  time  fell  into  the  habit  of 
voting  on  a  business  question  as  they  believed  he  was 
going  to  vote. 

I  recall  one  meeting  where  everyone  gathered, 
from  his  whole  attitude,  that  the  chief  was  in  favor 
of  the  plan  which  was  up  for  discussion.  So,  despite 
some  transparent  weaknesses  in  the  idea,  they  voted 
yes.  After  everyone  had  voted — the  votes  were 
always  polled  singly — the  chairman  made  his  an- 
nouncement: 

"I  vote  no,  and  the  noes  have  it.  You  men  voted 
yes  because  you  thought  I  would.  I  pay  you  for 
your  real  opinions,  not  to  say  what  you  think  I  think." 
It  was  a  good  object  lesson.  It  ended  the  yessing  for 
a  good  many  months. 

He  was  not  arbitrary  in  making  these  decisions. 
He  had  confidence  in  himself  bred  of  his  conduct  of 
the  business.  He  knew  the  right  turn  of  the  road 
where  most  of  his  men  must  guess  on  a  far  less  com- 
plete knowledge.  No  wonder  he  generally  arrived 
at  the  destination  while  the  rest  were  wondering 
what  it  was  all  about! 

An  old  plant  which  had  been  purchased  was  to  be 


"I  VOTE  NO!"  107 

extended  by  adding  a  large  unit.  The  manager  came 
to  Chicago  with  the  plans. 

One  feature  of  the  blueprints,  an  open  floor  for 
hanging  freshly  dressed  hogs,  attracted  the  unfavor- 
able attention  of  practically  everyone  in  the  meeting. 
It  seemed  a  needless  expense,  if  not  a  positive  impedi- 
ment to  economical  operation.  Father  listened  to  the 
attacks  for  a  while,  then  leaned  back  in  his  chair. 

"What've  you  got  to  say  to  that,  Johnny?"  he  in- 
quired of  the  manager,  the  son  of  a  Yankee  who  had 
come  to  the  Chicago  Yards  with  the  original  butcher 
gang  from  Assonet. 

"We  can  use  this  open  hanging  floor  for  refrigera- 
tion three  months  a  year,"  the  manager  pointed  out — 
the  plant  was  our  farthest  north  to  date.  "And  it  has 
other  technical  advantages."  He  proceeded  to  enu- 
merate them. 

Before  he  had  got  well  started  on  the  advantages, 
his  chief  held  up  a  hand  to  stop  him.  "Of  course 
you're  right,"  he  decided.  The  meeting  closed  right 
then  with  the  plans  approved. 

It  was  not  that  he  wanted  his  own  way  regardless. 
His  knowledge  was  so  great  that  when  a  practical 
man  was  enumerating  practical  reasons,  he  absolutely 
knew.  There  was  no  use,  therefore,  in  submitting 
the  plan  to  further  discussion  by  a  number  of  others 
even  though  these  others  were,  after  himself,  best 
fitted  to  judge. 

A  good  deal  may  be  said  in  favor  of  this  type  of 
meeting  after  all.     It  measures  up  to  the  ordinary 


108  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

conference  as  a  means  of  bringing  out  opinions  and 
information  from  everyone.  And  then  it  leaves  the 
decision  to  the  man  best  qualified  to  make  it.  It  puts 
an  automatic  stop  to  buck  passing  and  time  wasting, 
which  no  business  man  of  experience  will  deny  are 
the  principal  products  of  many  meetings.  If  the  top 
man  makes  his  decision  the  moment  he  has  the  facts 
at  his  disposal  and  then  dismisses  the  meeting,  it 
stops  the  time  wasting  before  it  has  a  chance  to  get 
started.  The  plan  has  not  been  wholly  disregarded 
in  our  organization  since  father's  time. 

Knowledge  of  every  detail  of  the  business  was  the 
taproot  of  his  way  of  managing.  His  technical 
knowledge  was  exhaustive,  perhaps  as  great  as  that 
of  any  man  the  packing  industry  has  known  even  to 
this  day.  His  grasp  of  the  facts  of  distribution,  of 
transporting  the  products,  of  the  current  standing 
of  company  finances — in  everything  from  buying  cat- 
tle and  icing  cars  all  the  way  through  where  he  would 
get  another  ten  millions  of  capital  and  how  he  would 
use  it — made  him  completely  the  master. 

One  reason  for  his  mastery  of  the  facts  was  the 
time  he  devoted  to  business,  at  the  office,  at  the  plants, 
and  at  home.  Never  have  I  known  anyone  gifted 
with  such  a  quick  mind  who  would  put  in  such  long 
hours  at  his  job. 

You  can  rarely  talk  with  anyone  who  held  a  place 
of  responsibility  under  G.  F.  Swift  without  there 
coming  out:  "I  remember  one  evening  G.  F.  had 
me  over  at  his  house  and  he  asked  me — "     Hardly 


"I  VOTE  NO!"  109 

an  evening  that  he  did  not  have  some  of  his  people 
at  the  house  talking  business  and  cramming  into  his 
already  exhaustive  knowledge  an  added  store  on  this 
point  or  that — and  incidentally  giving  the  employees 
the  benefit  of  his  knowledge  and  experience. 

Talking  business  was  his  principal  out-of-hours 
recreation,  if  it  could  be  called  out-of-hours — for  he 
had  no  hours  as  working  time  is  generally  recog- 
nized. The  waking  day  constituted  his  working  hours 
and  he  worked  at  top  speed  all  the  while. 

One  old-timer,  a  plant  man,  tells  how  for  weeks 
on  end  his  chief  had  him  at  the  house  every  evening 
until  bedtime.  This  was  in  the  early  days,  when  the 
packing  house  developed  new  and  difficult  problems 
every  few  hours.  Right  after  supper  the  plant  man 
would  arrive  and  for  perhaps  an  hour  they  talked  of 
the  day's  experience  in  workrooms  and  coolers. 

Then,  the  subject  temporarily  exhausted,  father 
would  begin  to  talk  about  the  export  business  which 
was  at  the  time  beginning  to  take  shape  in  a  small 
way  but  with  infinite  promise  for  the  future.  At 
least  two  or  three  hours  he  would  talk  exports  to 
this  man  who  knew  slaughtering  and  dressing  and 
shipping  but  who  had  not  an  ounce  of  first-hand 
knowledge  on  selling  overseas. 

"I  suppose  you  think  it's  funny  that  I  get  you  over 
here  and  tell  you  about  all  this  export  business  and 
its  troubles,"  was  the  explanation  which  came  one 
night  when  the  practical  packer  was  almost  drowsing 
in  his  chair  from  an  overdose  of  exporting.    "I'll  tell 


no  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

you,  I've  got  it  on  my  mind.  I've  got  to  tell  it  to 
somebody,  and  it's  got  to  be  somebody  I  can  trust. 
That's  why  you  get  it  every  night." 

For  many  years  we  all  lived  on  Emerald  Avenue 
or  a  block  or  two  away.  And  "we  all"  meant  the 
Swifts  and  the  whole  management.  If  a  man  held 
a  place  of  responsibility,  he  lived  within  easy  reach. 

The  Emerald  Avenue  location  was  a  neighborhood 
of  better  homes  than  now,  of  course.  But  it  was  never, 
at  best,  an  especially  attractive  residence  district. 
When  finally  G.  F.  Swift  moved  to  Ellis  Avenue, 
every  man  of  the  lot  joyfully  moved  across  town  to 
that  neighborhood. 

A  manager  or  superintendent  was  supposed  to 
come  to  the  house  when  he  was  sent  for,  no  matter 
what  the  hour  of  day  or  night.  And  while  father 
aimed  to  be  a  considerate  man  in  all  ways,  he  had 
no  respect  for  idle  time.  If  he  wanted  a  superintend- 
ent at  9 130  of  an  evening  for  an  hour's  talk,  he  sent 
for  him.  It  would  not  occur  to  him  that  the  super- 
intendent would  have  to  be  on  the  plant  at  6 130  next 
morning  and  that  the  evening's  talk  would  cut  into 
the  night's  rest.  To  any  one  of  his  people  a  night's 
rest  was  of  no  consequence  in  comparison  with  sup- 
plying information  to  the  chief. 

On  the  evening  after  the  big  stockyards  strike  of 
1884  had  been  broken,  principally  by  father's  stub- 
born stand  against  the  strikers'  demands,  he  called  all 
his  foremen  to  the  house.  "How  many  men  stayed 
with  you  through  the  strike?"  he  asked  each  one.    He 


"I  VOTE  NO!"  in 

kept  them  there  until  late  in  the  evening  discussing 
their  records  in  holding  their  men.  When  he  had 
finished,  they  had  a  new  comprehension  of  the  value 
of  working  with  men  in  the  way  that  wins  loyalty. 

He  was  always  known  as  a  pusher  of  men,  but 
never  as  an  inconsiderate  driver  by  the  men  who  re- 
mained with  him  long  enough  to  get  really  acquainted 
with  his  ways.  He  worked  hard  himself,  harder  than 
he  asked  anyone  else  to  work.  The  men  who  worked 
with  him  liked  his  pushing. 

"Don't  go  to  work  there,  they'll  work  you  to  death," 
a  youngster  was  advised  back  in  Clinton,  Massachu- 
setts, when  he  told  some  of  the  villagers  he  was  going 
to  work  in  G.  F.  Swift's  meat  market  there  in  the 
early  '70s.  But  the  boy  took  the  job  regardless.  He 
came  to  Chicago  in  the  slaughterhouse  gang  which 
killed  and  dressed  the  first  Swift  beef  at  the  stock- 
yards. He  grew  up  in  the  harness,  became  an  impor- 
tant man  in  the  company. 

"G.  F.  worked  me  hard,  but  he  never  worked  me  to 
death,"  chuckles  the  veteran,  today  retired  on  his 
farm  from  which  he  frequently  comes  to  visit  in  the 
office. 

No  man  ever  quit  whom  father  wanted  to  keep. 
Probably  the  chief  reason  was  that  if  he  believed  in 
a  man,  he  would  back  up  that  man  to  the  limit. 
Loyal  support  from  the  head  of  a  business  makes 
loyal  men  beneath  the  head.  And  if  G.  F.  Swift  did 
not  believe  in  a  man  enough  to  back  him  up,  then 
he  wanted  nothing  to  do  with  the  man. 


ii2  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

Certainly  in  the  early  days  he  did  not  hold  his  men 
by  paying  excessive  wages  and  salaries.  He  paid 
small  salaries  for  a  good  many  years.  The  business 
was  operating  on  so  small  a  capital  and  clamoring  so 
insistently  for  funds  that  he  had  to  hold  down  the 
outgo.  He  would  have  been  much  more  liberal  if  the 
needs  of  the  business  had  permitted  it.  He  was  more 
liberal,  by  far,  after  the  years  of  greatest  expansion 
were  past.  But  he  held  his  men  and  kept  them  work- 
ing for  him  loyally  and  intelligently  by  the  force  of 
his  character  and  the  high  standards  he  set  them.  No 
one  ever  attained  greater  results  from  his  men  than  he 
did,  principally  by  the  simple  expedient  of  expecting 
them  to  deliver  more  than  did  other  managers. 

"No  dead  lines,"  was  a  saying  he  strongly  favored 
— a  dead  line  was  what  kept  anyone  from  taking  an 
interest  in  some  activity  with  which  his  daily  work 
did  not  bring  him  into  contact.  Everything  was  con- 
sidered the  concern  of  everybody.  He  would  not 
accept  the  excuse  "It  wasn't  in  my  department"  or 
"I  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  sales  department."  He 
wanted  no  tattling.  But  he  wanted  every  one  of  his 
men  to  think  of  himself  as  a  Swift  man  rather  than 
as  a  lard  department  man  or  a  hide  cellar  foreman 
or  whatever  his  job. 

Because  father  was  the  most  important  individual 
in  the  company,  every  Swift  man  must  recognize  a 
duty  to  him.  That  was  why  a  Swift  man  who 
found  G.  F.'s  buggy  deserted  beside  a  railroad  cross- 
ing in  the  Yards  was  supposed  to  drive  it  to  the  barn. 


"I  VOTE  NO!"  113 

It  was  important  that  the  buggy  be  in  the  barn  ready 
for  the  chief's  call — and  it  was  the  lookout  of  any 
employee  that  it  get  there. 

How  deeply  this  idea  was  ingrained  in  father's 
mind  was  brought  out  several  times  by  incidents 
which  in  the  light  of  today's  attitude  toward  em- 
ployees are  downright  startling.  One  was  a  time 
when  his  horse,  left  unhitched  before  the  old  Live 
Stock  Exchange  Building,  took  it  into  his  head  to 
run  away  just  as  his  owner  was  coming  out  the  door. 

Down  the  crowded  street  ran  the  horse,  the  buggy 
swaying  dangerously  through  the  crowded  traffic. 
Then  out  from  the  sidewalk  dashed  a  workman, 
seized  the  horse's  head,  and,  after  being  dragged  a 
few  feet,  brought  the  rig  to  a  stop. 

Father  had  been  only  a  few  feet  behind,  on  the 
dead  run.  He  came  panting  up  and  addressed  the 
man  who  had  done  the  risky  job : 

"What's  your  name?" 

"John  Brown,  sir." 

"Who  do  you  work  for?" 

With  a  world  of  pride  in  his  voice  and  the  realiza- 
tion that  he  had  done  a  job  for  which  he  would  doubt- 
less he  praised,  the  man  answered:  "I  work  for  you, 
Mr.  Swift." 

"All  right,"  declared  his  employer,  by  now  in  com- 
plete command  of  the  situation.  "Be  about  your 
business." 

Chop-fallen,  the  workman  went  back  to  his  job — 
doubtless  believing  that  he  worked  for  a  curmudgeon 


ii4  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

with  not  an  idea  of  gratitude  in  his  head.  Meanwhile 
that  employer  returned  to  the  office,  had  the  man 
given  an  increase  in  pay,  called  in  the  superintend- 
ent under  whom  Brown  worked,  and  said,  "Here's  a 
man  worth  keeping  an  eye  on.  He  just  did  so-and-so. 
He  thinks  quickly  and  acts  quickly.  Chances  are  he'd 
make  a  good  foreman,  first  time  there's  an  opening." 

As  for  praising  the  man  for  bravery,  it  never 
entered  his  mind.  The  buggy  careening  down  the 
street  belonged  to  him,  and  hence  was  the  particular 
lookout  of  any  employee.  Why  shouldn't  any  man 
have  tried  to  stop  it?  The  point  was  that,  by  stop- 
ping it,  Brown  had  shown  himself  a  better  man  than 
the  mass  and  hence  deserved  his  advancement.  The 
raise  and  the  recommendation  were  not,  be  it  noted, 
any  tokens  of  gratitude  for  stopping  the  horse.  They 
were  for  having  the  qualities  which  he  showed  when 
he  stopped  the  runaway. 

Another  man,  a  clerk  in  father's  own  office,  was 
blocked  in  a  street-car  tangle  on  Clark  Street  one 
evening.  So  he  got  out  to  walk.  As  he  reached  the 
sidewalk  he  saw  his  chief  striding  along  in  a  great 
rush  perhaps  two  blocks  behind  him. 

He  recognized  immediately  that  his  boss  had  been 
delayed  by  the  car  blockade  in  getting  to  his  Kansas 
City  train.  The  clerk  knew  he  had  an  important 
appointment  in  Kansas  City  early  next  morning  and 
that  he  must  catch  the  train.  So  the  youngster  ran  at 
top  speed  for  the  cab  stand  of  the  old  Grand  Pacific 
Hotel,    several    blocks    up    Clark    Street.      Then 


''I  VOTE  NO!"  115 

jumping  in  the  cab  he  ordered  the  driver  to  make 
fast  time  south. 

Sure  enough,  he  soon  saw  the  tall  figure  of  his 
chief  striding  along,  at  every  step  looking  eagerly 
for  a  cab — and  with  very  little  chance  of  catching 
one  in  that  latitude.  The  clerk  pulled  the  cab  up  to 
the  curb  with  a  flourish.  "Jump  in,  Mr.  Swift,"  he 
directed.  "Get  to  the  Union  Station  in  three  min- 
utes," he  ordered  the  driver. 

"Mr.  Swift  never  said  anything  to  me  about  that," 
says  this  man,  who  today  occupies  a  place  of  large 
importance  with  us.  "I  knew  it  was  regarded  as  a 
good  piece  of  work,  and  I  suspect  it  was  behind  a 
promotion  which  came  to  me  soon  after.  But  as  far 
as  G.  F.'s  attitude  toward  me  was  shown,  he  expected 
that  sort  of  service  from  his  people.  Of  course  he 
knew  he  didn't  get  it  from  all  of  them,  so  when  he 
got  it  he  marked  the  man  responsible  as  worth  watch- 
ing in  future.  But  as  for  thanking  the  employees — 
that  would  have  placed  the  whole  transaction  on  a 
false  basis." 

He  was,  in  his  relations  with  the  people  under  him, 
as  in  all  his  relationships,  absolutely  and  meticulously 
fair.  But  he  was  never  guilty  of  letting  anyone  be- 
lieve that  he  expected  from  an  employee  anything 
less  than  the  utmost.  That  would  not  have  been  good 
management. 

Just  as  he  did  not  believe  in  praising  a  man,  so  he 
did  not  believe  in  bestowing  large  titles  on  employees. 
He  was  so  much  and  so  thoroughly  concerned  with 


n6  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

the  realities  of  earning  profits  that  the  surface  froth 
did  not  enter  into  his  calculations.  One  of  the  surest 
ways  to  arouse  his  irritability  was  by  going  to  him 
with  such  a  question  as,  "What  shall  we  call  Mr. 
So-and-So's  new  assistant?" 

"I've  got  no  use  for  them  titles,"  he  would  exclaim 
in  some  wrath,  waving  the  interrupter  out  of  the 
office  with  gestures  of  impatience. 

Very  few  indeed  were  the  titles  bestowed. 

Father  harbored  another  deep  conviction.  "Swift 
&  Company  can  get  along  without  any  man,  myself 
included,"  he  remarked  a  few  times  in  my  hearing. 
"This  business  will  be  bigger  after  I'm  gone — that's 
what  I'm  building  for." 

It  is  bigger  since  he  is  gone. 

But  I  know  that  it  could  not  have  become  so  big 
and  so  successful  without  the  impetus  it  received  from 
his  management.  Nor  could  its  growth  have  been  so 
steady  and  healthy,  lacking  the  heritage  of  sound 
management  methods  and  management  policies 
which  he  built  and  gathered  for  it. 


CHAPTER  VII 


HE  HAD  TO  SPREAD  OUT 

WHETHER  right  or  wrong,  father  would 
expand  his  business  at  every  opportunity.  He 
was  a  born  expansionist. 

But  he  was  not  a  plunger.  He  knew  his  business, 
knew  it  intimately  and  in  great  detail.  Because  he 
could  see  where  others  could  only  grope,  his  vision 
was  steadily  ahead  of  his  time. 

"That  crazy  man  Swift,"  the  wiseacres  called  him 
when  he  came  to  the  Yards  from  the  East  and  set  his 
whole  energy  and  twenty  years'  saving  to  accomplish- 
ing something  at  which  everyone  else  had  failed.  No 
one  had  succeeded  in  shipping  dressed  meat  east  and 
disposing  of  it  at  a  profit.  It  was  one  of  those  things 
which  everyone  knew  couldn't  be  done. 

His  partner  Hathaway,  of  the  Boston  firm  of 
Hathaway  &  Swift,  could  see  no  chance  for  success 
— and  Hathaway  had  been  in  the  live-stock  business 
a  good  many  years  longer  than  had  his  younger 
partner. 

Hathaway  knew,  as  did  everyone  else,  a  thousand 
reasons  why  nobody  could  sell  Chicago-dressed  beef 
in  the  East,  and  why  the  East  would  continue  to  eat 
meat  from  cattle  shipped  alive  for  slaughter  at  the 
point  of  consumption.     So  vehemently  did  each  feel 

117 


u8  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

himself  right  that  the  partnership  had  to  be  dissolved, 
though  with  no  break  in  the  friendship. 

So  the  younger  Yankee  was  left  to  build  himself 
a  business,  to  build  it  on  his  dream  and  his  accumu- 
lated capital  of  thirty  thousand  dollars — which  was 
not  enough  even  in  1875  t0  operate  the  smallest  con- 
ceivable packing  plant  for  thirty  days.  He  started 
under  the  handicap  of  inadequate  capital.  He  was 
not  willing  as  so  many  men  are  willing  to  give  his 
capital  a  chance  to  catch  up  with  the  size  of  his  busi- 
ness. He  could  have  done  this  in  the  first  very  few 
years  after  he  succeeded  in  accomplishing  "the  impos- 
sible."   But  he  would  keep  spreading  out. 

Always  his  vision  ran  ahead  of  his  fellows,  of  his 
competition,  and  of  his  capital.  Always  he  had  under 
way  some  enterprise  which  strained  almost  to  the 
breaking  point  the  supply  of  working  funds  he  could 
command.  And  despite  this  ability  of  his  somehow 
to  keep  ahead  of  financial  difficulties,  his  mind  ran 
ahead  of  his  financing  ability — he  felt  himself  held 
back  because  he  had  not  enough  money  to  do  this 
or  that.    It  was  always  so. 

Even  if  he  had  lacked  his  insistent  urge  to  expand, 
he  would  unquestionably  have  become  a  successful 
packer.  His  other  abilities  were  too  great  for  him 
to  have  made  anything  short  of  a  success.  It  was  his 
creed  of  "Expand,  and  then  some  more,"  which  kept 
him  from  using  his  $30,000  to  build  one  of  the 
smaller  packing  establishments,  one  of  the  scores  do- 
ing a  profitable  business  in  tens  of  millions  of  dollars. 


HE  HAD  TO  SPREAD  OUT  119 

This  creed  it  was  which  built  him  one  of  the  very  few 
transacting  a  volume  in  the  hundred  millions. 

He  always  had  an  eye  for  business  beyond  the  ken 
of  others  similarly  situated.  He  was  only  nine  years 
old,  as  a  relative  tells  the  story,  when  he  walked  into 
his  grandfather's  house  and  said,  "Grandpa,  I'll  give 
you  forty  cents  for  the  old  white  hen." 

"All  right,"  agreed  his  grandfather — and  with  no 
more  ado  the  boy  paid  his  money  and  went  to  catch 
his  hen. 

"Isn't  that  new  business  for  Stave,  buying  hens?" 
inquired  an  older  cousin  who  had  been  completely 
ignored  by  the  nine-year-old  intent  on  his  job. 

"Why,"  the  grandfather  answered,  "he  is  here 
almost  every  day  after  one.  He  finds  a  customer 
somewhere.     Seems  to  get  enough  out  of  it  to  pay." 

There  had  to  be  some  way  for  the  boy  to  make 
money,  if  he  was  to  have  any  for  himself.  Certainly 
there  was  no  surplus  for  distribution  among  the 
twelve  children  on  his  father's  sandy,  unfertile  Cape 
Cod  farm.  The  best  paying  crop  on  Cape  Cod  today 
— almost  the  only  paying  crop — is  summer  boarders. 
For  a  good  many  years  after  Gustavus  F.  Swift's 
birth  in  1839  the  summer  boarders  had  not  begun 
their  annual  migration. 

The  boy  saw  little  that  was  promising  in  life  as  a 
butcher's  helper  in  a  Cape  Cod  village.  He  had  gone 
to  work  for  his  older  brother  Noble  at  fourteen  and 
by  his  sixteenth  birthday  was  making — be  sure  that 
he  was  earning — three  dollars  a  week. 


120  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

Even  in  those  days  of  1855  the  golden  goal  of  ambi- 
tious Cape  Cod  lads  was  Boston.  He  began  to  lay 
his  plans  for  a  move  to  Boston  and  the  West. 

His  father  objected.  He  saw  for  his  son  no  great 
future  in  the  big  city,  equipped  as  he  was  with  no 
fund  of  education,  of  business  experience,  or  of  dem- 
onstrated ability.  He  held  that  strong  sixteen-year 
old  country  lads  were  a  drug  on  the  Boston  market. 
To  back  up  his  ideas  he  was  willing  to  do  a  fair  share 
— more  than  a  fair  share,  perhaps,  when  one  con- 
siders the  value  of  a  cash  dollar  in  his  circumstances 
of  life. 

"You  really  want  to  be  in  the  meat  business,  don't 
you?"  he  questioned  his  son.  "All  right,  Stave,  I'll 
give  you  twenty-five  dollars  to  start  up  in  the  meat 
business  around  home.  That  way  you  can  get  your 
start  right  here,  instead  of  going  away  to  the  city." 

With  this  twenty-five  dollars  was  started  the  busi- 
ness which  is  today  Swift  &  Company.  The  lineage 
is  straight  as  an  arrow.  For,  twenty-five  dollars  in 
his  pocket,  the  boy  of  sixteen  set  forth  to  enter  the 
meat  business. 

He  made  a  neighbor  an  offer  for  a  good  fat  heifer 
he  thought  he  might  butcher  to  advantage.  It  is 
characteristic  of  his  shrewdness  as  a  trader — shrewd- 
ness as  far  above  his  age  as  was  his  shrewdness  above 
other  business  men's  thirty  years  later — that  he  did 
not,  boylike,  offer  his  whole  twenty-five  dollars. 
Whatever  his  original  offer,  he  actually  purchased 
the  heifer  for  nineteen  dollars,  as  he  told  the  story  in 


SALLY  SEARS  CROWELL 

SWIFT,  MOTHER  OF 

G.   F.   SWIFT. 


WILLIAM  SWIFT,  FATHER 
OF  G.  F.  SWIFT. 


HE  HAD  TO  SPREAD  OUT  121 

later  life.  He  drove  her  home  and  slaughtered  her 
in  a  shed.  Now  he  was  embarked  in  the  retail  meat 
business. 

He  cut  up  the  beef,  loaded  the  cuts  into  a  wagon 
of  his  father's  and  set  out  to  sell  the  meat  in  the  neigh- 
borhood. Fortune  favored  the  enterprise,  another 
way  of  saying  that  he  had  used  good  judgment  in 
buying  the  heifer,  ample  skill  in  cutting  up  the  car- 
cass, and  sales  ability  in  disposing  of  the  cuts.  He 
netted  ten  dollars  out  of  the  transaction  for  his  time 
and  trouble.  Forthwith  he  went  out  to  repeat  the 
operation  and  the  resultant  profit. 

For  a  few  weeks  or  months  he  had  ample  capital — 
the  only  time  in  his  business  career  when  he  had, 
except  for  the  last  two  or  three  years  of  his  life.  But 
soon  that  active  mind  of  his  began  to  see  larger  oppor- 
tunities which  called  for  more  working  funds  than 
he  had  been  able  to  acquire  by  selling  pot-roasts  and 
steaks  and  ribs.  He  could  always  see  the  chance  to 
make  more  money  by  doing  on  a  larger  scale. 

The  first  occasion  of  this  sort  has  been  told  by  a 
cousin  of  my  father's,  E.  W.  Ellis,  sixty-five  years 
later.  Thomas  W.  Goodspeed  set  it  down1  as  fol- 
lows: 

"He  called  on  Uncle  Paul  Crowell  (son  of  Grand- 
father Crowell  and  village  storekeeper).  I  obtained 
this  information  a  few  days  after  from  Uncle  Paul 
himself.  Stave  said,  'I  want  to  borrow  some  money. 
Will  you  lend  it  to  me?' 

1  The  University  of  Chicago  Biographical  Sketches,  Vol.  I,  p.  176. 


i22  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

"  'Oh,'  said  Uncle  Paul,  'how  much  do  you  want?' 

"  'Four  hundred  dollars,'  said  Stave. 

"  'Whew,'  said  Uncle  Paul,  'what  you  going  to  do 
with  it?' 

"  'I  want  to  go  to  Brighton  stockyards  and  buy 
some  pigs.' 

"  'Why,  that  will  be  quite  an  undertaking  for  a 
boy.' 

"  'Yet,'  said  Uncle  Paul  to  me,  'I  could  but  admire 
his  ambition.' 

"Brighton  yards,  located  northwest  of  Boston,  sixty 
miles  distant!    Just  imagine  it!    The  worst  kind  of 

sandy,  crooked  roads Well,  in  about  ten  days, 

he,  with  his  drove,  hove  in  sight  at  my  father's  home. 
He  had  sold  some,  but  about  thirty-five  shoats  were 
still  with  him.  I  looked  over  his  outfit,  which  con- 
sisted of  an  old  horse  and  a  democrat  wagon  in  which 
a  few  tired  or  lame  pigs  were  enjoying  a  ride  and  a 
rest  with  their  legs  tied  together.  With  him  was  an- 
other lad  as  helper,  who  was  trying  keep  the  shoats 
from  straying.  There  was  Stave,  a  tall,  lank  youth, 
with  a  rope  and  steelyards  on  his  shoulder,  also  a 
short  pole  he  carried  in  his  hand  that  might  do  duty 
to  suspend  the  squealers  and  steelyards  between  his 
shoulders  and  those  of  his  customer.  Father  said: 
'There  is  a  good  exhibition  of  ambition.  Gustavus 
Swift  will  make  a  success  in  whatever  business  he 
undertakes.  For  he  has  the  right  make-up.'  Gus- 
tavus made  several  such  trips  to  Brighton  for  pigs, 
spring  and  fall,  for  two  or  three  years." 


HE  HAD  TO  SPREAD  OUT  123 

The  occupation  of  drover  under  these  conditions 
was  at  best  highly  seasonal.  Outside  the  spring  and 
fall  months,  he  might  have  lacked  occupation.  In- 
stead, he  worked  out  a  procedure  which  gave  him  a 
business.  He  arranged  for  quarters  at  Brighton 
stockyards  where  he  could  slaughter  his  animals. 

Each  Friday  he  bought  a  steer  on  the  market  there 
and  slaughtered  it  on  Saturday.  The  quarters  he 
hung  over  Sunday.  Monday  morning  bright  and 
early  saw  him  in  his  democrat  wagon  with  the  meat, 
bound  for  Cape  Cod.  By  Friday  he  had  sold  his  beef 
and  was  back  at  Brighton  once  more,  making  his 
weekly  purchase  of  one  animal. 

From  his  repeated  Monday-to-Friday  trips  the 
young  man  accumulated  a  little  money — a  very  little, 
no  doubt,  but  enough  to  give  him  a  foothold  as  a 
retail  meat  dealer  instead  of  a  wagon  peddler.  So 
he  opened  a  market  at  Eastham,  which  shortly  after- 
ward he  turned  over  to  his  brother  Nathaniel.  Then 
he  opened  a  meat  market  at  Barnstable  and  settled 
down  as  the  meat  dealer  for  this  town  of  five  hundred. 

Father  and  mother,  Annie  Maria  Higgins,  had 
been  married  during  the  short  career  at  Eastham.  At 
Barnstable  they  and  their  growing  family— there 
were  four  of  us  children  by  then — remained  some 
eight  years.  But  it  was  not  the  retail  business  which 
held  G.  F.  Swift.  Rather  it  was  a  broad  business 
he  had  developed,  leaving  the  market  to  be  run  by 
a  clerk.    Once  more  he  was  at  his  habit  of  expanding. 

Beginning  as  he  had  at  sixteen   and   continuing 


124  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

without  interruption  as  a  cattle  buyer,  by  the  time 
he  moved  to  Barnstable  he  had  become  an  extremely 
good  judge  of  cattle.  There  is  no  way  to  check  up 
on  the  accuracy  of  a  cattle  buyer's  judgment  except 
to  see  how  his  purchases  dress  into  beef.  Even  though 
his  career  had  been  active  for  only  six  or  seven  years, 
father  had  been  seeing  how  each  one  of  his  cattle 
dressed — not  only  seeing  it  but  also  feeling  with  his 
own  pocketbook  the  results  of  his  judgment.  In  a 
man  of  his  shrewdness  the  only  possible  result  was 
that  he  became  a  remarkably  good  cattle  buyer. 

With  his  knack  of  seeing  the  opportunity  for 
broadening  out  his  activities,  he  had  no  sooner  been 
set  down  in  Barnstable  than  he  began  to  wonder  if 
he  could  not  market  Cape-Cod-raised  cattle  at  a 
profit.  The  average  farmer  had  only  one  or  two  head 
for  sale  in  a  season.  The  nearest  market,  besides  the 
small  local  butchers  like  himself,  was  at  Brighton 
beyond  Boston.  And  it  didn't  pay  to  drive  just  one 
or  two  head  to  Brighton,  even  as  low  as  the  farmer 
valued  his  time. 

So  once  more  G.  F.  Swift  ramified  his  business. 
To  be  sure,  he  kept  the  meat  market,  but  this  was 
now  a  side  issue.  He  became  a  cattle  dealer,  buying 
on  Cape  Cod  and  selling  at  Brighton. 

It  is  noticeable  that,  however  he  might  expand  or 
diversify  his  interests,  he  never  deviated  by  a  hair's 
thickness  from  the  original  direction  of  his  work. 
Ever  broader,  ever  making  a  little  better  living,  ever 
building  up  his  capital  but  spreading  it  just  as  thin 


HE  HAD  TO  SPREAD  OUT  125 

as  he  safely  could,  he  was  on  his  way  to  founding  the 
modern  dressed  meat  industry! 

By  1869,  when  he  was  thirty  years  old,  he  had 
accumulated  enough  to  take  his  first  step  of  any  size. 
His  capital  was  far  from  a  fortune;  it  had  taken  him 
fourteen  years  to  expand  his  original  capital  of  twen- 
ty-five dollars  into  a  sum  sufficient  for  anything  at  all 
extensive.  With  this  capital  which  he  had  sweated 
out  by  working  sixteen  hours  a  day  father  opened 
the  meat  market  at  Clinton,  Massachusetts. 

This  enterprise  has  been  described  earlier  in  this 
book.  It  was  a  large  store,  for  that  time  and  place 
a  pretentious,  ambitious  store.  It  developed  quickly 
into  a  large  and  profitable  retail  business  doing  an 
annual  volume  of  thirty-five  or  forty  thousand  dol- 
lars. It  yielded  him  an  income  which  in  those  days 
was  unusually  good  for  a  small  town. 

But  hardly  had  he  attained  for  his  store  the  mo- 
mentum he  had  planned  when  his  mind  grasped  other 
opportunities.  Being  a  retail  meat  dealer  involved 
pretty  much  killing  his  own  meat  animals  and  selling 
the  cuts  a  few  pounds  at  a  time.  But  there  were  grow- 
ing up,  in  some  of  the  more  thickly  populated  districts 
such  as  that  around  Boston,  wholesale  slaughterers 
and  wholesale  meat  dealers  who  supplied  neighbor- 
ing retailers  fresh  dressed  meats,  thus  saving  the 
storekeeper  the  job  of  slaughtering. 

Father  was  not  unaware  of  this  development,  and 
of  the  related  development  which  involved  a  shift 
of  source  of  meat  animals  from  local  raisers  to  the 


126  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

grazing  districts  of  the  West.  The  ratio  of  cattle 
population  to  human  population  of  the  New  England 
states  had  declined  far  below  the  point  of  domestic 
supply.  The  cattle  to  make  up  this  deficiency  were 
coming  in  from  the  West,  which  meant  that  someone 
was  making  a  profit  in  handling  them. 

Never  did  a  significant  trend  of  any  sort  within 
the  live-stock  or  meat  industries  escape  G.  F.  Swift's 
alert  mind.  He  saw  a  chance  to  become  the  slaught- 
erer and  wholesale  supplier  to  his  neighboring  retail 
meat  markets.  Soon  he  was  doing  a  considerable 
business  in  selling  to  the  trade. 

But  even  this  development,  with  its  improvement 
of  a  business  already  to  be  counted  good,  did  not 
hold  him  for  long.  He  had  attracted  the  attention 
of  two  of  the  prominent  figures  in  the  New  England 
live-stock  and  meat  businesses.  One  was  D.  M.  An- 
thony, a  large  wholesale  slaughterer  and  meat  dealer 
of  Fall  River.  The  other  was  J.  A.  Hathaway,  a 
cattle  dealer  most  of  whose  animals  found  their  way 
aboard  cattle  ships  bound  for  England  from  Boston. 

Anthony  wanted  young  Gustavus  Swift  in  with 
him.  So  did  Hathaway.  The  upshot  was  that  the 
Clinton  business  was  turned  over  to  Edwin  C.  Swift 
to  manage.  And  two  new  firms  came  into  existence : 
Anthony,  Swift  &  Company,  of  Fall  River;  Hatha- 
way &  Swift,  of  Brighton. 

Shortly  thereafter  we  went  to  Brighton  to  live. 
Father  sold  his  retail  market  at  Clinton  to  a  man 
named  Pope,  while  my  uncle  continued  to  manage 


HE  HAD  TO  SPREAD  OUT  127 

the  Clinton  wholesale  business.  All  of  the  Clinton 
butchers  who  were  not  needed  for  the  wholesale  busi- 
ness were  now  transferred  to  Anthony,  Swift  &  Com- 
pany's slaughterhouse  at  Assonet,  just  outside  Fall 
River. 

"Well  enough''  was  never  satisfactory  to  Gustavus 
Swift.  He  had  been  at  Brighton  only  a  year  or  two, 
buying  cattle  for  Hathaway  to  ship  and  for  Anthony 
to  slaughter,  when  he  decided  that  the  advantageous 
way  to  buy  cattle  was  near  the  source  of  supply.  A 
big  stockyards  had  been  established  at  Albany.  So 
he  moved  us  to  Albany,  a  peg  nearer  the  source  of 
supply. 

However  good  Albany  had  looked  to  him  as  the 
primary  market  when  he  was  doing  business  in  east- 
ern Massachusetts,  it  looked  nowhere  nearly  so  fine 
after  he  was  on  the  ground.  To  be  sure,  cattle  were 
there  to  be  dealt  in  in  great  quantity.  But  to  his 
analytical  mind  it  was  not  right  as  a  primary  market. 

He  followed  the  railroad  back  to  Buffalo,  where 
another  large  stockyards  was  running.  He  kept  tak- 
ing short  trips  there  to  look  over  the  market  and  to 
buy  a  few  cattle.  Buffalo  was  better  than  Albany, 
because  it  was  nearer  where  the  cattle  came  from. 
It  left  a  good  deal  to  be  desired,  though.  Chicago 
was  yet  to  be  inspected. 

The  more  father  thought  about  Chicago,  the  more 
logical  it  sounded.  The  cattle  on  their  way  from  the 
farms  and  the  ranches  and  the  plains  made  Chicago 
their  first  stop.    Then  why  was  not  Chicago  the  place 


128  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

where,  inevitably,  cattle  could  be  purchased  to  the 
best  advantage?  At  Chicago  must  be  the  greatest 
selection,  with  the  minimum  of  commissions  and 
handling  charges  accrued  against  the  animals. 

So  in  1875  he  came  to  Chicago.  Here  he  bought 
cattle  for  Hathaway  to  resell,  for  the  Anthonys  and 
Edwin  C.  Swift  to  slaughter  and  sell  at  wholesale. 
He  also  purchased  cattle  in  Chicago  on  commission 
for  Calvin  Leavitt  &  Son,  of  Brighton,  which  sold 
these  cattle  to  the  Brighton  butchers. 

Wellington  Leavitt,  who  is  now  and  for  a  great 
many  years  has  been  Swift  &  Company's  head  cattle 
buyer,  was  the  "Son"  in  the  firm  of  Calvin  Leavitt 
&  Son.  When  Wellington  Leavitt  was  still  in  busi- 
ness at  Brighton  with  his  father,  he  helped  sell  cattle 
sent  down  by  my  father  from  Chicago. 

What  cattle  G.  F.  Swift  purchased  at  Chicago 
that  summer  of  1876  all  went  east  in  cattle  cars.  But 
he  conceived  the  idea  of  slaughtering  the  cattle  at 
Chicago  and  shipping  only  the  edible  parts.  Why 
pay  freight  on  a  thousand-pound  steer?  That  steer 
would  dress  down  to  six  hundred  pounds  of  beef. 
Most  of  the  remaining  four  hundred  pounds  were 
thrown  away  or  were  even  an  expense  because  some- 
one had  to  be  paid  to  cart  them  off. 

Father  tried  it  experimentally  the  next  winter.  He 
shipped  box  cars  of  dressed  beef.  Some  of  the  cars 
were  heated  by  stoves  to  prevent  too  hard  freezing 
and  accompanied  by  a  man  to  tend  the  fires.  Other 
cars    were    shipped    with    no    stoves,     completely 


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HE  HAD  TO  SPREAD  OUT  129 

dependent  on  the  weather.  All  of  the  cars  came 
through  in  good  condition,  with  the  beef  all  the  bet- 
ter for  hanging  several  days  in  transit. 

From  this  the  step  to  refrigerator  cars  was,  in  time, 
short.  In  difficulties  it  was  long  and  wearying,  too 
long  for  discussion  at  this  point. 

Every  step  of  it,  however,  involved  expanding, 
involved  spending  more  money,  involved  a  larger 
volume  to  make  possible  the  savings  or  the  profits  or 
whatever  the  objective  was  for  which  at  the  moment 
he  was  striving.  He  had  to  lay  all  of  the  ground- 
work himself.  No  one  else  could  obtain  the  funds 
he  needed.  No  one  else  could  improvise  the  thous- 
and and  one  successful  expedients  which  kept  his 
business  going  upward. 

For  he  kept  the  business  climbing.  Rather  he 
raised  it  to  ever  higher  points  by  projecting  his  crea- 
tive imagination  upward  from  one  stage  to  the  next, 
then  taking  the  leap  and  carrying  the  business  with 
him. 

And  he  held  absolutely  to  his  own  business.  This 
is  a  basic  reason  why  he  succeeded  in  building  up  his 
business  so  fast.  He  went,  everyone  knows,  at  a  rate 
considerably  faster  than  a  conservative  man  would 
have  thought  either  possible  or  safe.  He  held  abso- 
lutely to  his  own  line.  He  knew  what  he  was  doing 
and  why.  His  decisions  were  based  on  a  meticulous 
knowledge  of  his  own  affairs  and  of  the  whole  in- 
dustry. He  built  in  his  own  way  and  didn't  wait 
until  the  time  when  he  would  have  the  money. 


i3o  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

Each  step  of  expansion  was  a  definite  progress 
along  a  charted  road.  Father  had  no  idea  at  the 
outset  that  his  business  would  or  could  become  as 
large  as  eventually  it  did.  But  he  was  heading  it 
always  in  its  given  direction. 

He  developed  the  idea  of  shipping  beef  instead  of 
cattle.  Right  there  he  unquestionably  selected  his 
goal.  He  determined  to  head  those  who  purveyed 
meat  to  the  public. 

He  set  his  heart  on  being  the  leader,  he  set  his  mind 
to  becoming  the  leader.  This  would  have  seemed  a 
preposterous  dream  to  anyone  but  himself,  consider- 
ing his  lack  of  money  and  backing.  No  wonder  they 
called  him  "that  crazy  man  Swift."  But  if  to  others 
it  seemed  overreaching,  to  father  it  seemed  so  wholly 
reasonable  that  he  attained  leadership  by  a  route 
straight  as  an  arrow.  He  went  that  route,  he  reached 
his  goal  by  strength  of  will  and  determination. 

All  circumstances  were  with  him — particularly 
the  times.  If  he  had  not  exploited  the  refrigerator 
car,  someone  else  no  doubt  would  have  succeeded 
with  it  in  at  least  a  few  years.  Others  had  already 
had  some  success  with  refrigerator  cars  without  at- 
taining leadership  in  the  industry.  With  his  early 
control  of  large-scale  use  of  the  refrigerator  car  and 
his  remarkable  combination  of  ability  and  energy, 
father  had  an  advantage  which  he  crowded  to  the 
limit.    This  limit  was  the  leadership  of  his  field. 

How  he  pushed  for  sales  outlets  has  already  been 
described.    His  personal  working  methods  by  which 


HE  HAD  TO  SPREAD  OUT  131 

during  the  early  days  he  concentrated  sixteen  or 
eighteen  or  occasionally  twenty-four  hours  a  day  on 
overwhelming  problems  which  harassed  him — these 
have  been  told  in  a  previous  chapter.  The  summer 
of  1875  nad  seen  tne  thirty- five-year-old  Yankee  come 
to  Chicago's  Yards  as  a  late  entrant  in  a  race  which 
seemed  already  settled.  Fifteen  years  later  he  had 
sales  branches  or  dealers  in  every  strategic  city  of 
the  United  States.  He  was  shipping  great  quanti- 
ties of  meat  abroad  in  refrigerator  ships.  He  had 
outlets  all  through  the  British  Isles  and  in  many  Con- 
tinental cities. 

No  longer  was  his  enterprise  confined  to  beef.  He 
had  put  the  company  into  mutton,  into  pork  and  pro- 
visions, into  all  of  the  by-product  lines  which  had 
been  an  essential  outgrowth.  Swift  refrigerator  cars 
rolled  by  the  thousands  over  every  railroad  in  the 
country. 

It  was  toward  the  close  of  the  '8os  that  he  raised 
the  question  of  building  branch  plants  still  nearer 
the  source  of  supply  than  Chicago.  Beef  cattle  were 
coming  principally  from  the  West  and  Southwest. 
Why  not  slaughter  them  near  their  points  of  origin 
and  thus  effect  savings  comparable  to  the  savings 
which  had  been  attained  when  beef  was  dressed  at 
Chicago  instead  of  at  Fall  River? 

At  Kansas  City,  Kansas,  was  a  stockyards  of  con- 
siderable size.  Several  concerns  were  operating 
packing  plants  there,  one  or  two  of  them  on  a  reason- 
ably large  scale.     It  was  selected  as  the  site  of  our 


i32  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

first  western  branch.  In  1888  the  Kansas  City  plant 
went  up. 

It  provided  an  excellent  market  for  southwestern 
cattle.  But  Kansas  City  was  not  the  most  economical 
point  for  stock  from  the  plains  of  western  Nebraska 
and  Colorado  and  the  country  farther  north.  So  the 
Kansas  City  plant  had  been  operated  for  only  a  few 
months  when  an  identical  plant  was  built  at  Omaha. 
The  Omaha  plant  was  completed  in  1890.  The  plant 
at  East  St.  Louis,  Illinois,  was  finished  in  1892. 

The  panic  year  1893  gave  the  building  program  a 
set-back.  But  after  a  few  months  to  recover  his 
wind,  father  was  once  more  aggressively  at  his  plans 
for  expansion.  His  next  step  was  the  St.  Joseph, 
Missouri,  plant,  finished  in  1896.  Its  start  and  its 
subsequent  history  well  illustrate  his  way  of  tackling 
a  problem  when  it  presented  itself  to  him. 

St.  Joseph  is  between  Kansas  City  and  Omaha. 
It  is  far  less  important  as  a  railroad  center  than 
either  of  these  larger  cities. 

An  earlier  effort  had  established  the  packing  in- 
dustry at  St.  Joseph,  but  while  it  had  managed  to 
struggle  along  it  had  not  thriven.  Kansas  City  with 
its  large  live-stock  market  offered  stockmen  a  better 
chance  to  sell  their  animals.  At  Kansas  City,  buyers 
were  actively  competing  and  huge  numbers  of  ani- 
mals were  dealt  in  daily. 

At  St.  Joseph,  only  sixty-five  miles  away,  there 
was  little  activity.  Grass  was  literally  growing  in 
the  yards  there.     The  local  business  men  earnestly 


iiiiitt 


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G.   F.   SWIFT,  ABOUT   1885, 


HE  HAD  TO  SPREAD  OUT  133 

wished  to  bring  in  one  of  the  larger  packers  with  a 
large  plant.  And  they  approached  the  head  of  Swift 
&  Company. 

He  did  not  want  his  information  or  opinions  at 
second  hand.  He  went  to  St.  Joseph,  taking  with 
him  a  few  of  his  lieutenants,  and  was  feted  and 
argued  at.  But  all  of  that  rolled  off  his  mind  like 
so  much  water. 

It  was  at  a  banquet  given  him  in  St.  Joseph  that 
he  made  one  remark  from  which  has  echoed  many 
a  chuckle.  Frogs'  legs  were  part  of  one  course,  but 
the  guest  of  honor  refused  them. 

"You'd  better  have  some,  Mr.  Swift,"  urged  one 
of  the  local  hosts.     "They're  very  tender." 

"They  ought  to  be,"  the  partisan  of  beef  came  back 
at  him  with  some  heat.  "All  a  frog  does  is  sit  on  the 
bank  and  sing!" 

Not  the  entertainments,  but  the  personal  investi- 
gations of  himself  and  of  his  men,  finally  induced  his 
decision.  He  studied  the  town,  the  people,  the  char- 
acter of  the  country.  For  several  days  he  drove 
around  the  surrounding  country  by  himself  or  ac- 
companied by  that  one  of  his  own  men  who  could 
contribute  the  most  expert  knowledge  of  whatever 
point  he  was  studying. 

The  character  of  the  soil.  The  local  crops.  The 
number  of  bushels  to  the  acre.  The  kind  of  roads. 
The  kind  of  farmers.  The  way  the  railroad  layout 
would  permit  shipping  stock  to  St.  Joseph.  All  these 
points  he  studied  until  he  probably  knew  a  good  deal 


i34  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

more  about  them  than  did  any  local  banker  or  other 
man  around  St.  Joseph. 

His  investigations  showed  him  that,  even  though 
it  was  within  sixty-five  miles  of  Kansas  City,  a  good 
market  at  St.  Joseph  would  divide  the  Kansas  City 
and  Omaha  hog  supply.  He  could  buy  the  St.  Joseph 
stockyards,  which  would  give  him  an  advantage  here. 

Everybody  considered  it  a  wild  enterprise,  even 
most  of  the  men  most  closely  associated  with  him. 
But  the  chief  had  made  up  his  mind.  "Folks  think 
we're  a  little  bit  crazy,"  he  told  the  meeting  which 
had  gathered  to  consider  the  purchase.  "But  there's 
lots  of  live  stock  down  that  way.  They  haven't  got 
a  real  market  there,  so  they  don't  get  the  animals. 

"If  we  set  out  to  make  a  market  there,  we'll  make 
a  market.  We'll  buy  the  stockyards  and  put  up  a 
plant." 

It  looked  like  a  foolish  move.  The  St.  Joseph 
plant  was  built  over  the  objections  of  a  large  share 
of  his  organization.  But  it  paid — paid  well.  Like 
many  of  his  most  profitable  expansions,  in  advance  it 
seemed  to  almost  everyone  else  absolutely  wrong. 
He  was  simply  ahead  of  the  rest  of  us.  He  grasped 
all  the  facts  and  correlated  them  into  a  plan  which 
brought  dollars  into  his  stockholders'  pockets. 

Immediately  after  the  St.  Joseph  plant  came  the 
plant  at  South  St.  Paul.  Here  was  a  defunct  pack- 
ing plant  which  he  bought  because  he  saw  something 
that  others  could  not  see. 

People  thought  hogs  could  be  raised  only  where 


HE  HAD  TO  SPREAD  OUT  13  s 

corn  was  grown — and  the  country  around  St.  Paul 
was  not  then  notable  for  corn.  But  father  never  did 
much  loose  thinking.  He  had  a  scientist's  passion  for 
indisputable  facts.  He  checked  up  and  learned  that 
the  farmers  there  had  screenings  and  other  small 
grains  which  did  not  grade  up  well.  Consequently 
a  farmer  could  more  profitably  turn  this  into  pork 
than  he  could  sell  it  as  grain. 

He  was  right.  Almost  invariably  he  was  right  in 
anything  bearing  on  his  affairs.  Now  South  St.  Paul 
kills  more  hogs  than  any  other  Swift  plant  except 
Chicago,  which  has  of  course  remained  the  largest 
plant  in  every  respect. 

G.  F.  Swift  could  see  further  into  the  packing  in- 
dustry's future  than  any  man  I  have  ever  known.  He 
was  very  much  the  expansionist  all  of  the  time.  He 
saw  cheap  live  stock  and  he  could  not  keep  his  hands 
off  it.  He  had  to  expand  to  get  facilities  he  felt  he 
had  to  have — and  he  expanded  so  intelligently  that 
he  reached  exactly  the  point  he  was  aiming  for. 

Nothing  was  too  big  for  him  if  it  looked  to  show 
a  profit.  Sioux  City  stockyards  offer  an  illustration. 
There  had  been  a  top-heavy  boom  at  Sioux  City, 
financed  by  eastern  money.  In  every  direction  the 
plans  had  been  laid  along  most  ambitious  lines — and 
eventually  it  blew  up,  of  course. 

Father  wanted  the  stockyards.  The  creditors  would 
not  sell  the  stockyards  separately.  They  would  sell 
everything  to  one  buyer  or  they  would  sell  nothing. 
So  he  bought  the  whole  thing,  paying  a  large  sum 


136  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

of  money  and  taking  along  with  his  stockyards  a 
number  of  enterprises  he  had  no  use  for. 

Here  once  more  nobody  would  vote  with  him. 
Everyone  knew  he  was  wrong.  But  his  vision  showed 
him  that  the  stockyards  alone  were  a  good  buy  at  the 
price  he  had  to  pay  for  the  whole — even  if  he  had 
to  throw  away  everything  else  about  the  property. 
As  it  was,  the  facilities  which  were  not  needed  were 
gradually  sold  off,  the  last  parcel  years  after  his 
death.  But  as  he  had  foreseen,  this  was  an  excellent 
buy.  Today  the  stockyards  are  worth  considerably 
more  than  he  paid  for  the  whole  property.  What  he 
and  subsequently  his  estate  sold  the  rest  for  was  clear 
profit  on  an  already  profitable  deal. 

Always  he  kept  his  affairs  ahead  of  his  finances 
and  his  plans  ahead  of  his  affairs.  One  reason,  the 
principal  reason  he  managed  to  carry  the  thing  off, 
was  that  he  knew  his  business  and  held  to  it  exclu- 
sively. He  had  no  interests  outside  live  stock,  pack- 
ing, and  closely  related  enterprises.  A  secondary 
reason  why  he  succeeded  where  most  men  must  have 
failed  was  that  he  knew  the  measure  of  everyone  from 
whom  he  borrowed  money  in  any  considerable 
amount.  The  lender  acted  as  the  borrower  counted 
on  him  to  do  every  time. 

When  father  started  at  Chicago  in  1875,  those  in 
a  position  to  size  him  up  swore  he  would  fail.  When 
he  began  to  expand,  the  dire  prophecies  were  quite 
as  confident.  But  he  made  every  enterprise  success- 
ful with  which  he  was  connected. 


HE  HAD  TO  SPREAD  OUT  137 

At  the  outset,  he  had  about  thirty  thousand  dollars 
from  his  share  of  the  partnership  of  Hathaway  & 
Swift.  In  1885  ms  firm  was  incorporated  as  Swift 
&  Company,  with  three  hundred  thousand  dollars 
capitalization.  Within  two  years  he  had  to  recap- 
italize for  three  millions,  so  rapid  had  been  the 
young  company's  expansion. 

By  1896  the  capital  stock  was  fifteen  millions.  By 
1903,  the  year  of  his  death,  the  capital  was  twenty- 
five  millions.  And  every  cent  of  the  capital  had  come 
either  from  earnings  or  from  subscriptions  at  par 
by  existing  stockholders  whenever  a  new  issue  was 
made.  The  company's  total  sales  in  1903  exceeded 
one  hundred  and  sixty  million  dollars.  Its  president 
had  seven  thousand  employees  under  him  by  that 
time. 

For  Gustavus  Franklin  Swift,  while  a  dreamer 
and  a  visionary,  based  his  dreams  and  his  visions 
of  expansion  very  much  on  the  practical  facts  of 
life. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

"I  RAISE  BETTER  MEN" 

THERE'S  an  ice  house  down  at  Beardstown 
might  be  a  good  buy  for  us,"  G.  F.  Swift  in- 
structed one  of  his  young  men  some  thirty-five  years 
ago.  I  want  you  to  go  down  there  and  look  it  over 
carefully.  Get  the  facts  on  its  dimensions,  ice  capac- 
ity, construction,  and  everything  else  important." 

So  the  youngster  journeyed  to  Beardstown,  spent 
the  better  part  of  a  day  there,  and  next  day  presented 
himself  at  his  chief's  desk.  He  reported  a  great  as- 
sortment of  facts. 

Finally  the  boss  interrupted  him  to  inquire,  "What 
kind  of  drainage  is  there  off  the  roof?" 

"Drainage?" 

"Yes,  drainage.  What  kind  of  spouts,  gutters, 
and  so  on?" 

The  ice-house  expert  got  red  in  the  face.  He  did 
not  answer. 

"All  right,  now,  you  don't  know,  you  don't  know, 
do  you?  You  get  right  on  the  next  train  and  have 
another  look  at  that  ice  house.  When  you  come  back, 
you  be  able  to  tell  me  all  about  that  roof  drainage 
and  anything  else  you  think  maybe  I  ought  to  know 
that  you  don't  know  now." 

So  back  to  Beardstown  the  young  man  traveled. 

138 


"I  RAISE  BETTER  MEN"  139 

He  spent  a  day  going  over  the  ice  house  a  second 
time.  Half  the  day  he  spent  on  the  roof.  Next  day 
he  was  back  to  report  once  more. 

"You  went  up  on  the  roof  this  time,  didn't  you?" 
inquired  his  chief  after  listening  to  a  detailed  de- 
scription of  every  foot  of  tinsmithing  about  the 
premises. 

"Yes,  sir." 

"I  wanted  to  get  you  up  on  that  roof,"  he  declared 
with  a  dry  chuckle.  "I  wanted  to  get  you  up  some- 
where near  the  top  of  this  business.  There's  only 
one  way  a  fellow  like  you  can  get  to  the  top.  If  you 
don't  do  your  job  any  better  than  you  did  first  time 
I  sent  you,  the  only  way  you'll  get  to  the  top  is  by 
running  the  elevator." 

Another  time  father  was  coming  from  the  East 
to  Chicago  on  a  train  arriving  at  night.  At  Cleve- 
land the  manager  of  one  of  our  wholesale  markets 
got  on  the  car,  going  to  some  town  near  by.  His 
chief  joyously  cornered  him  at  once  and  began  ask- 
ing questions,  as  was  his  habit  with  any  manager  he 
ever  succeeded  in  getting  off  by  himself. 

All  went  smoothly  for  a  while.  Then  the  boss 
asked,  "How  many  windows  on  the  west  side  of  your 
cooler?" 

"I  don't  know,  Mr.  Swift." 

"Don't  know!  I  never  heard  of  a  branch-house 
manager  who  didn't  know  how  many  windows  he 
had  in  his  cooler!  You  get  off  this  train,  go  back  to 
Cleveland  and  find  out  all  about  those  windows.    I'll 


140  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

expect  you  in  my  office  at  Chicago  tomorrow  morning 
to  tell  me  how  many  windows  there  are  and  anything 
else  I  ask  you.  I  guess  we're  slowing  up  now.  See 
you  in  the  morning."  And  he  blandly  waved  the 
bewildered  manager  off  at  Sandusky. 

Next  day  the  man  appeared  at  Chicago  and  under- 
went a  rigid  examination  on  all  of  the  details  of  his 
cooler  and  its  peculiarities.  What's  more,  word  of 
the  episode  spread  through  every  Swift  channel  in 
the  country.  Managers  who  valued  their  peace  of 
mind  knew,  thereafter,  how  many  windows  their 
coolers  had.  Moreover,  they  knew  a  whole  lot  more 
about  their  physical  equipment  than  ever  before. 

At  handling  men,  at  selecting  them,  at  training 
them  to  places  of  real  responsibility — at  all  of  these 
duties  father's  ability  was  superlative.  His  methods 
were  in  large  measure  unconventional.  By  their  very 
lack  of  resemblance  to  the  time-honored  and  time- 
worn  they  were  the  more  effective. 

When  he  sent  a  man  back  to  have  a  second  look 
at  the  roof  drainage  of  an  out-of-town  ice  house  the 
employee  learned  for  all  time  that  on  any  assigned 
job  he  must  do  just  as  well  as  any  man  could.  What 
is  more,  this  lesson  made  him  into  a  first-rate  head 
of  the  ice  department — a  position  into  which  the 
man  developed  and  which  he  filled  creditably  for 
many  years. 

At  one  stroke  G.  F.  Swift  taught  this  lesson  to  a 
good  many  people  besides  the  particular  man  who 
had  to  make  the  second  trip.     Because  the  punish- 


"I  RAISE  BETTER  MEN"  141 

merit  was  so  picturesque  and  at  the  same  time  was 
both  laughable  and  appropriate,  the  story  was  passed 
along  from  employee  to  employee.  It  was  something 
to  chuckle  about — and  while  he  chuckled,  every 
Swift  man  worth  his  salt  applied  to  himself  the 
standard  of  performance  toward  which  the  parable 
pointed. 

The  branch-house  manager  who  returned  home  to 
count  the  cooler  windows  went  for  a  parallel  reason: 
a  manager  ought  to  know  all  about  the  equipment 
he  is  in  charge  of.  The  method  the  chief  used  here 
was  almost  exactly  the  same  as  that  applying  to  the 
ice-house  roof.  Yet  I  dare  say  no  thought  of  it  came 
into  his  mind  when  he  ordered  the  manager  off  at 
Sandusky.  His  mind  worked  so  directly  on  a  specific 
problem  in  handling  men  that  he  arrived  forthwith 
at  the  proper  answer.  That  the  problem  was  similar 
accounts  for  the  similar  solution. 

Father  frequently  asserted,  "I  can  raise  better 
men  than  I  can  hire."  The  proof  of  the  assertion  is 
in  the  present-day  proportion  of  men  trained  under 
him  who  are  in  positions  of  high  responsibility  with 
Swift  &  Company  more  than  twenty  years  after  his 
death.  He  trained  his  men — "raised  'em,"  as  he 
used  to  say — by  methods  which  are  as  sound  in  prin- 
ciple now  as  they  were  then.  Obviously  some  of 
the  details  would  not  fit  this  generation,  which  stub- 
bornly believes  that  the  boss  is  not  invariably  right. 

A  man  who  later  had  charge  of  one  of  our  most 
important  activities  recently  told  of  an  experience 


i42  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

with  his  chief  forty-odd  years  ago.  He  had  come  to 
work  just  before  Christmas  of  1884,  at  a  weekly  wage 
of  fifteen  dollars.  He  had  made  a  strong  effort  to 
get  seventeen  when  he  was  hired,  and  failed.  So 
after  a  year  he  asked  for  the  two-dollar  raise. 

"G.  F.  took  me  out  in  the  hall,"  he  tells  the  story, 
"and  walked  me  around  a  corner  to  a  window.  I  can 
see  him  yet,  as  he  put  his  cowhide  boot  up  on  the 
window  sill  and  looked  down  his  nose  at  me.  'You 
think  you're  worth  more  money'n  you're  gettin',  do 
you?'  he  inquired  rather  savagely. 

"  'Yes,  sir/  I  assured  him. 

"  'Well,  you're  not,'  he  told  me.  And  then  he 
started  in  to  tell  what  he  thought  of  me  as  an  em- 
ployee. It  took  him  a  long  while.  I  had  felt  pretty 
sure  of  myself  before  I  tackled  him  for  the  raise  and 
I  had  a  lot  of  good  reasons  why  I  deserved  it.  But 
I  never  got  a  chance  to  use  them.  He  told  me  what 
was  wrong  with  my  attitude  toward  my  work  and 
he  illustrated  the  general  statements  with  specific 
examples  out  of  my  short  career  with  him.  He  used 
the  examples  liberally,  yet  managed  to  give  me  the 
impression  he  had  a  lot  more  in  mind  which  he 
wasn't  citing  because  of  the  short  time  at  his  disposal 
for  so  insignificant  a  task. 

"He  literally  took  my  hide  off  and  nailed  it  to  the 
door.  When  he  got  through  with  me,  I  felt  real 
gratitude  that  he  still  tolerated  my  unwholesome 
presence  in  the  office  and  was  willing  to  let  me  con- 
tinue drawing  the  same  old  fifteen  dollars  a  week. 


"I  RAISE  BETTER  MEN"  143 

When  he  had  finished  the  job,  after  an  hour  and  a 
half  or  perhaps  two  hours,  I  went  back  to  my  desk 
and  went  to  work.  I  was  full  of  the  idea  that  I  was 
next  to  useless.  But  G.  F.  had  left  a  ray  of  hope 
in  parting.  He  let  me  believe  I  might  have  a  chance 
to  become  a  productive  member  of  the  community 
if  I  really  buckled  down  to  the  job  of  putting  into 
use  some  of  the  advice  I  had  just  received! 

"A  year  afterward,  I  got  my  two-dollar  raise 
without  asking  for  it.  After  that  I  steadily  went 
along,  taking  on  more  responsibility  and  drawing 
bigger  pay.  It  was  some  time  after  G.  F.  had  raised 
me  to  ten  thousand  that  he  inquired  very  casually 
one  day,  'Remember  that  time  I  took  you  out  in  the 
hall  over  in  the  old  Exchange  Building  and  told  you 
what  I  thought  of  you?' 

"I  had  supposed  he  had  forgotten  it  years  before. 
'Yes,'  I  admitted — and  I  could  feel  myself  getting 
red  around  the  ears  with  the  memory  of  it. 

"  'Do  you  know  why  I  did  it?'  he  asked  me. 

"  'The  only  reason  I  know  is  that  you  were  mad  at 
me  because  I  had  been  doing  such  a  poor  job,'  I  told 
him  honestly. 

"  'Why,  no.  That  wasn't  it  at  all,'  he  explained 
in  some  astonishment  that  I  had  not  comprehended 
it  long  before.  'You  were  doing  right  well  for  a 
young  fellow.  Not  bad  at  all.  But  I  thought  you 
had  the  makings  of  something  better  than  an  ordinary 
clerk  and  I  wanted  to  see.  I  jumped  on  you  that 
day  just  to  put  your  feet  on  the  ground.     It  made 


144  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

a  man  of  you,  that  talk  did.  I  could  see  it  by  next 
morning.'    You  know,  I  think  he  was  right!" 

Father  did  not  believe  in  sparing  overmuch  the 
feelings  of  the  man  who  needed  correction  or  guid- 
ance or  reproof.  He  felt  that  if  a  man  needed  talking 
to,  the  talk  had  better  be  strong  and  to  the  point. 
In  these  days  employees  were  less  sensitive,  their 
sensibilities  had  not  been  so  assiduously  cultivated. 
Consequently  his  specific  ways  of  going  at  such  a  job 
roughshod  did  the  minimum  harm  and  the  maximum 
good. 

But  even  though  his  methods  would  require  some 
alteration  to  be  usable  today,  the  principle  on  which 
they  were  based  is  just  as  sound  as  ever  it  was.  The 
man  who  hears  promptly  and  forcefully  about  a  mis- 
take of  procedure  or  of  judgment  has  been  caught 
at  the  right  time  and  in  the  right  way  to  make  him 
remember  the  lesson.  If  he  is  the  right  kind  of  man 
he  is  better  off  for  being  corrected. 

It  is  remarkable  to  look  back  now  and  see  how 
large  a  proportion — how  unbelievably  large  a  pro- 
portion— of  the  men  who  came  in  for  father's  re- 
formative measures  have  come  up  and  up  in  the 
ranks.  Some  of  the  men  he  started  in  on  could  not 
stand  the  treatment  and  dropped  out.  Most  of  those 
who  stuck  it  out  became  real  assets  to  the  company 
and  have  been  rewarded  accordingly. 

Yet  it  was  not  always  easy  to  reconcile  a  spirited 
man  to  treatment  which  he  might  feel  was  nagging. 
Those  of  us  who  were  very  close  to  G.  F.  Swift  and 


"I  RAISE  BETTER  MEN"  145 

had  worked  with  him  over  a  long  term,  knew  that 
he  never  nagged.  It  was  a  mark  of  distinction  to 
any  man  to  have  his  chief  return  time  after  time  to 
point  out  that  individual's  shortcomings  and  general 
uselessness. 

One  youngster  was  working  as  an  assistant  of  mine 
when  some  failing  or  other  brought  him  to  father's 
attention.  The  boy  was  in  a  position  where  he  was 
responsible  for  the  work  of  a  sizeable  group  of 
people,  many  of  them  a  good  deal  older  than  himself 
and  longer  in  the  service.  Consequently  when  he 
undertook  to  change  their  ways  he  had  his  troubles. 

What  caught  the  chief's  eye  was  something  that 
the  youngster's  subordinates  were  doing  wrong.  I 
happened  to  be  out  of  town,  else  the  first  reproof 
would  have  come  my  way.  As  it  was,  he  went  after 
my  helper. 

It  was  his  fashion,  once  some  wrong  method  or 
weak  spot  claimed  his  attention,  to  check  it  up  daily. 
The  youngster  did  not  make  very  fast  progress  in 
correcting  his  people's  fault.  So  every  evening,  along 
about  closing  time,  he  was  sent  for.  When  he  came 
to  the  front  office  he  received  a  talk  on  his  weaknesses 
as  a  manager.  Finally  the  chief  saw  that  some 
resentment  was  smoldering.  So  he  inquired,  "You 
think  I've  been  after  you  pretty  hard,  don't  you?" 

"Yes  I  do,  Mr.  Swift." 

"Well,  I'll  tell  you.  If  you  work  for  me  long 
enough,  some  day  you'll  know  something  and  you'll 
be  some  good  to  somebody."    That  was  G.  F.  Swift's 


146  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

idea  of  a  handsome  way  to  make  amends  for  all  he 
had  said  before! 

Finally,  after  ten  days  or  so  I  returned  from  my 
trip.  The  youngster  was  just  waiting  for  me  to  return 
so  he  could  quit.  But  I  had  one  argument  that 
changed  his  mind.  "Father  doesn't  go  after  a  man 
day  in  and  day  out  if  he  thinks  he's  wasting  it,"  I 
told  him.  "You  sit  here  every  day,  you  hear  the  way 
he  goes  after  me,  so  you  know  you  aren't  getting  half 
as  much  scolding  as  I  am.  He's  pretty  careful  about 
not  going  to  a  lot  of  trouble  to  correct  a  man  if  he 
doesn't  think  the  man  is  worth  correcting." 

Before  long  the  youngster  was  sent  to  England  on 
a  particularly  important  job — at  the  chief's  sugges- 
tion. A  little  later  he  had  to  do  some  more  foreign 
traveling.  While  he  was  still  in  his  early  twenties  he 
was  untangling  hard  knots  for  us  all  over  the  world. 
Today  he  is  operating  one  of  our  largest  plants.  He  is 
a  fair  sample  of  the  results  father  got  by  his  methods. 
They  were  effective  even  though  they  sometimes 
seemed  harsh. 

I  doubt  whether  G.  F.  Swift  consciously  thought 
of  himself  as  a  teacher  in  his  job  of  training  execu- 
tives. Certainly  he  was  about  the  most  effective 
teacher  I  have  encountered.  And  while  he  was  a 
terror  to  the  man  who  was  weak  or  wrong,  he  was 
extremely  helpful  to  the  man  who  tried  hard. 

One  plant  manager  says  of  him:  "When  I  first 
started  to  work  in  a  place  where  Mr.  Swift  saw  me, 
I  was  afraid  of  him  and  would  go  out  of  my  way  to 


"I  RAISE  BETTER  MEN"  147 

avoid  him.  But  after  I  really  knew  what  I  was 
doing,  I  especially  wanted  to  see  him  when  I  came 
to  Chicago.  Before  I  planned  a  trip  definitely  I 
would  generally  try  to  find  out  if  G.  F.  was  planning 
to  be  there.  Even  when  I  didn't  have  any  one  thing 
to  take  up  with  him,  I  wanted  to  see  him.  For  I 
knew  that  in  the  course  of  our  talk  he  would  give 
me  some  idea  or  other  which  would  be  valuable — 
more  valuable  than  anything  I  was  likely  to  get  else- 
where." 

When  any  of  the  leading  men  of  the  branch  houses 
or  even  one  of  the  more  important  beef  salesmen 
came  to  Chicago,  that  man  stayed  at  his  chief's  house. 
The  custom  had  its  start  in  the  early  days  when  trans- 
portation from  the  stockyards  was  slow  and  difficult, 
so  that  for  convenience  the  men  had  to  be  kept  at  the 
house  instead  of  being  sent  to  downtown  hotels.  It 
was  continued  because  father  liked  to  keep  right  on 
with  his  business  after  the  evening  meal  and  he  saw 
a  really  valuable  way  to  employ  this  time  in  talking 
with  his  out-of-town  men. 

He  would  question  the  visitor  by  the  hour  until 
he  had  satisfied  himself  that  the  man  was  honest  and 
knew  his  job.  Then  the  more  intensive  questioning 
ceased.  But  in  the  earlier  months  of  a  man's  tenure 
of  his  new  job,  every  visit  to  Chicago  meant  so  many 
evenings  of  cross-examination. 

One  new  manager  after  his  first  experience  of  this 
sort  went  back  home  and  prepared  a  good-sized 
pocket  notebook  in  which  he  kept  facts  and  figures 


148  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

of  all  sorts  that  his  chief  might  require.  A  travel- 
ing auditor  or  someone  of  the  sort  brought  back  to 
Chicago  word  of  this  loose-leaf  ready-reference  com- 
pendium. It  appealed  to  everyone,  including  father, 
as  a  huge  joke.  Thereafter  he  was  extra  careful  to 
ask  this  man  unusual  questions.  Tradition  has  it 
that  for  three  years  the  notebook  was  maintained, 
that  every  time  its  owner  came  to  Chicago  he  kept 
his  hand  on  its  reassuring  bulk  in  his  coat  pocket — ■ 
and  that  not  once  in  that  time  was  he  asked  a  ques- 
tion for  which  he  had  the  answer  in  his  book  I 

After  a  new  man  in  a  new  job  had  established  him- 
self as  worth  educating,  his  employer  would  proceed 
with  the  training.  One  of  his  methods  was  to  go 
over  a  batch  of  random  mail  with  the  visitor,  espe- 
cially in  the  later  years  of  his  life  when  he  used  to 
have  some  of  his  letters  sent  over  to  the  house.  He 
would  ask  the  guest  what  he  would  do  about  this 
request  for  charity,  about  that  application  for  rein- 
statement. After  a  session  like  this  the  employee  had 
a  grasp  on  some  of  the  basic  rules  of  business  which 
he  had  never  before  comprehended. 

Once  G.  F.  was  convinced  that  a  man  should  de- 
velop into  someone  of  consequence,  he  kept  trying 
and  trying  to  do  the  job.  It  was  seldom  he  failed. 
But  occasionally  he  had,  after  a  long  struggle,  to  give 
it  up. 

There  was  one  such  man  he  sent  to  St.  Joseph  as 
assistant  manager.  The  newcomer  did  not  fit  in  and 
after  a  while  was  transferred  to  Kansas  City.     No 


"I  RAISE  BETTER  MEN"  149 

matter  how  much  time  his  sponsor  would  spend  with 
this  man,  he  could  not  bring  him  up  to  the  mark. 
Also  he  kept  trying  to  get  both  the  St.  Joseph  man- 
ager and  the  Kansas  City  manager  to  say  that  the  fel- 
low was  some  good.  Finally  he  gave  it  up.  But  he 
hated  to  do  it. 

"There  isn't  much  use  giving  up  a  man  too  early 
if  you  think  maybe  he's  going  to  be  all  right,"  he 
observed  on  this  occasion  and  a  good  many  times 
after.  It  became  one  of  his  precepts  in  developing 
men. 

If  he  once  sized  a  man  up  as  having  possibilities, 
he  would  not  easily  change  his  opinion.  Occasion- 
ally this  wasted  a  good  deal  of  everyone's  time  in 
trying  to  develop  a  man  who  would  not  develop. 
Also  it  lost  just  so  many  months  in  getting  the  right 
man  on  that  job.  But  more  time  is  saved  by  patience 
in  training  men  than  by  impatience.  Few  traits  cost 
employers  as  much  as  the  common  failing  of  giving 
up  a  man  for  hopeless  long  before  he  has  proved  it. 
We  try  to  inculcate  in  all  our  people  this  idea  that 
there  is  no  use  giving  up  a  man  before  he  has  proved 
himself  worthless.  As  a  result  we  develop  the  latent 
ability  in  a  good  many  men  and  women  who  would 
not  last  two  months  if  we  were  critical  in  the  early 
stages. 

In  general  father  was  not  much  on  hiring  men 
from  the  outside  for  jobs  of  any  consequence.  He 
preferred  hiring  his  men  young  and  bringing  them 
up  by  hand.    His  inclination  was  to  hire  competent 


ISO  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

men  on  the  outside  only  when  they  were  especially 
equipped  for  some  new  enterprise  with  which  we 
lacked  experience. 

Occasionally,  though,  he  stepped  right  across  the 
line  and  hired  someone  for  a  special  reason.  When 
our  plant  at  St.  Joseph  was  building,  he  made  the 
acquaintance  there  of  an  eastern  man,  O.  W.  Waller, 
who  was  having  an  uphill  fight  to  make  his  little 
packing  plant  break  even.  Father  developed  the 
habit  of  dropping  in  on  Waller  for  a  visit  after  his 
list  of  duties  in  St.  Joseph  had  been  completed  and 
he  was  ready  to  leave  by  the  first  train. 

One  evening  their  visit  continued  until  about  half 
an  hour  before  time  for  the  Chicago  train.  It  hap- 
pened that  Waller  was  also  going  to  Chicago  but  had 
said  nothing  about  it.  Instead,  once  the  caller  was 
out  of  his  office  he  hustled  out  the  back  way,  jumped 
into  his  buggy,  and  drove  home  for  dear  life.  At 
home  he  changed  his  suit,  packed  a  bag,  ate  a  hasty 
supper,  and  was  driven  up  to  the  station  platform  at 
a  gallop  just  as  the  train  pulled  in. 

Quite  a  party  of  us  were  going  in  on  that  train, 
but  father  was  fascinated  by  the  performance  of  his 
rapid-moving  acquaintance.  It  was  so  wholly  like 
his  own  way  of  arriving  with  never  a  minute  to  spare. 
He  deserted  his  own  forces  for  the  companionship 
of  the  St.  Joseph  packer  after  introducing  us  singly 
and  recounting  the  speed  with  which  this  gentleman 
had  traveled  once  he  got  started. 

They  sat  together  during  all  of  the  evening,  in  the 


"I  RAISE  BETTER  MEN"  151 

course  of  which  father  reminesced  in  great  detail 
about  his  career  from  the  age  of  nine  down  to  date. 
This  of  itself  was  so  unusual  that  we  were  all  aston- 
ished. As  they  said  good-night,  father  told  him, 
"Any  time  you  want  to  come  to  work  for  me,  I've 
a  good  job  for  you." 

Not  long  afterward  Waller  gave  up  the  fight.  He 
had  not  been  able  to  overcome  the  handicaps  of  inade- 
quate capital  and  inefficient  plant.  No  sooner  was 
he  announced  as  going  out  of  business  than  the  head 
of  Swift  &  Company  was  after  him  to  take  a  job 
with  us.  Waller's  ability  to  accomplish  a  great  deal 
in  a  short  time  was  so  remarkably  like  his  own  that 
father  recognized  he  would  fit  well  into  a  place  of 
responsibility. 

So  he  was  sent  for  to  come  to  Chicago.  And  all 
around  the  offices  the  chief  introduced  him  to  every- 
one as  "Mr.  Waller  from  St.  Joseph,  who's  come  to 
work  for  Swift  &  Company." 

"But  I'm  not  working  for  Swift  &  Company,"  pro- 
tested Waller. 

"You  mean  to  say  you  wouldn't  work  for  us  in  the 
right  kind  of  a  job?" 

"What  kind  of  a  job?" 

"Manager  of  a  packing  house." 

"It  might  be  all  right,  if  it  was  the  right  packing 
house,"  admitted  Waller.  "What  one  did  you  have 
in  mind?" 

"St.  Louis." 

"I  wouldn't  go  there  on  a  bet." 


152  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

"Will  you  go  for  six  or  eight  weeks?" 

"Why,  yes,  if  it's  only  for  that  long." 

"I  thought  you'd  go  to  St.  Louis,"  exulted  his  new 
boss.  "After  that  the  new  plant  will  be  ready  at  St. 
Joe  and  you  can  take  it." 

So  Waller  went  to  St.  Joseph  as  manager  of  our 
newest  branch  plant.  He  went  on  the  chief's  say-so 
and  pretty  much  over  the  judgments  of  the  other  men 
well  up  in  our  councils,  for  he  was  a  new  man  with 
us  and  it  has  never  been  our  policy  to  put  outsiders 
over  old  employees  if  the  job  could  possibly  be  filled 
from  within.  But  this  once,  G.  F.  Swift  was  con- 
vinced that  he  had  hired  a  better  man  than  any  of 
the  "raised"  variety  who  were  available.  And  he 
stuck  to  his  conviction. 

Because  he  did  not  want  to  take  a  single  chance 
of  being  wrong  after  he  had  put  an  outsider  in  this 
place  without  consulting  the  judgment  of  his  lieuten- 
ants, the  boss  proceeded  to  devote  special  attention 
to  Waller.  For  the  first  year  or  so  the  St.  Joseph 
manager  was  frequently  summoned  to  Chicago  and 
father  went  often  to  St.  Joseph. 

Since  then  Waller  has  occasionally  told  of  his  long 
sessions  with  his  chief.  From  dinner  time  on,  every 
evening  in  Chicago  was  devoted  to  talking  over  Wal- 
ler's management  problems,  the  affairs  of  the  one 
plant  and  of  the  company.  Father  was  always  ready 
to  counsel  with  him — though,  in  all  justice  it  must 
be  said  there  was  no  need  for  paying  any  extra  atten- 
tion to  him.    As  usual,  the  head  of  the  business  had 


"I  RAISE  BETTER  MEN"  153 

been  absolutely  right  in  his  size-up  of  his  man.  Yet 
Waller  declares  today,  no  doubt  correctly,  that 
his  lightning-like  activity  in  catching  the  train  at 
St.  Joseph  is  alone  what  attracted  the  attention  of 
G.  F.  Swift  and  brought  about  his  offer  of  a  good  job. 

In  the  early  days  the  business  kept  calling  for  more 
and  more  men  as  it  grew,  and  its  head  had  to  hire  a 
good  many  men  outside.  His  trade  was  shooting 
upward  so  fast  that  even  his  ability  at  training  execu- 
tives could  not  keep  up  with  the  demand.  So  he  was 
always  picking  up  likely  looking  men  and  putting 
them  in  training  for  jobs  that  needed  filling. 

For  example,  there  was  a  grocer  near  where  we 
lived.  He  had  a  good  enough  little  business  as  neigh- 
borhood grocery  stores  went.  But  that  discerning 
eye  saw  in  him  the  material  for  a  bigger  place  than 
ever  his  little  store  would  afford.  Father  therefore 
advised  him  to  sell  his  business  and  come  to  work 
for  us. 

First  thing  we  knew  the  store  had  changed  hands 
and  the  man  was  working  in  our  wholesale  market. 
He  learned  there  how  a  wholesale  market  is  run  and 
the  points  which  need  watching.  Presently  he  was 
going  around  our  branch  houses  checking  up  on  the 
managers,  helping  them  to  build  up  to  the  standard 
maintained  in  our  Chicago  packing-house  market  and 
picking  up  from  all  of  them  hints  which  he  might 
pass  on  to  the  rest  so  that  the  wholesale  organization 
would  run  more  smoothly. 

G.  F.  Swift's  standing  and  reputation  were  such 


i54  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

that  many  a  man  gave  up  his  own  established  busi- 
ness to  come  to  us,  with  full  confidence  that  he  was 
bettering  himself.  That  is  how  L.  A.  Carton  came 
as  treasurer  in  1893  when  the  financial  end  of  the 
organization  loomed  too  big  for  its  founder's  con- 
tinuing attention.  It  is  how  a  good  many  of  the  best 
men  came  in  the  early  days. 

The  man  who  could  do  better  than  most  men  some 
task  which  was  part  of  our  function  was  a  man  to 
catch  his  employer's  attention.  In  the  first  years 
of  the  business  this  is  how  a  good  many  of  the  men 
were  found  on  the  outside  to  take  places  of  respon- 
sibility with  us.  All  the  way  through  it  has  been 
how  men  inside  the  organization  have  been  chosen 
for  larger  positions. 

There  was  one  young  man  who  came  as  a  clerk 
in  the  president's  office.  At  first  his  duties  were 
chiefly  filing.  But  he  showed  a  real  knack  for  keep- 
ing up  with  the  work  and  for  finding  letters  or  con- 
tracts on  the  instant.  Moreover  he  displayed  an 
intelligent  comprehension  of  the  fact  that  he  was 
there  to  save  his  chief's  time  and  energy.  Several 
times  he  used  unusual  gumption  under  circumstances 
where  he  might  have  been  excused  for  letting  things 
slide  along. 

So  his  boss  noticed  him.  And  one  day  when  his 
secretary  was  away,  with  the  youngster  taking  hold 
of  the  work  as  best  he  could,  a  cable  announced  that 
a  ship  which  we  were  counting  on  to  carry  a  load 
of   beef    to    England    had    gone    into    dry-dock    at 


On 


"I  RAISE  BETTER  MEN"  155 

Liverpool  and  therefore  could  not  meet  its  scheduled 
sailing  date  from  Boston. 

The  schedule  of  sailings  was  handled  in  that  office 
by  another  man  under  the  secretary.  The  secretary 
always  checked  over  this  man's  work  and  then  sub- 
mitted it  to  his  chief.  So  the  youngster  turned  over 
to  the  expert  the  job  of  rearranging  the  schedule  of 
sailings. 

But  when  it  came  to  submitting  this  to  the  chief 
the  expert  would  not.  He  was  downright  afraid, 
with  that  bone-quaking  fear  some  clerks  have  of  the 
big  boss.  So  the  report  had  to  be  taken  in  by  the 
younger  clerk,  with  the  expert  hovering  in  the  back- 
ground to  handle  any  overtechnical  questions. 

Right  away,  of  course,  there  came  a  question  fairly 
bristling  with  technicalities.  The  spokesman  said, 
"I  don't  know  about  that,  Mr.  Swift.  Brown  here 
can  tell  you." 

"So  you  don't  know,  eh?"  inquired  the  boss  pleas- 
antly. "Well,  I  don't  know  as  I'd  expect  you  to 
know  all  about  that.  But  if  you're  going  to  come 
in  here  with  reports  you've  got  to  know  all  about 
them.  I  don't  want  to  have  Brown  explain  it,  as 
long  as  you're  the  one  that's  bringing  it  to  me.  You 
go  along  now  and  find  out  all  about  it.  Probably 
Brown  can  make  you  understand  it.  After  you  do, 
come  back  and  tell  me.  I  expect  to  be  in  all  morning. 
And  if  we  come  to  something  else  you  don't  know, 
why  I  guess  we  can  give  you  some  more  time  to  find 
that  out." 


156  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

One  secret  of  his  success  in  training  men  was  the 
way  he  dealt  with  them.  He  knew  all  about  prac- 
tically every  detail  in  the  business,  the  standards  to 
which  every  operation  must  be  held.  His  micro- 
scopic eye  for  detail  never  overlooked  any  really  sig- 
nificant points,  even  though  he  might  not  concern 
himself  too  immediately  with  them. 

When  he  wrote  instructions  to  a  manager  or  a 
superintendent,  he  was  explicit.  Usually  he  closed 
such  letters  with  the  injunction :  "Please  answer  and 
say  if  you  will  carry  out  these  instructions. "  That 
phrase,  winding  up  a  letter,  leaves  no  doubt  in  the 
recipient's  mind  as  to  what  is  expected  of  him. 

At  the  same  time,  given  a  man  in  whom  he  had 
confidence,  he  would  seldom  overrule  that  individ- 
ual's deliberate  judgment.  He  preferred  to  let  the 
man  incur  a  loss,  if  necessary,  to  prove  to  his  own 
satisfaction  what  would  always  have  remained  a 
doubt  if  it  had  had  to  be  accepted  on  his  chief's  say-so. 
And  he  was  seldom  so  cock-sure  that  he  knew  he 
must  be  right  and  his  employee  wrong. 

The  manager  of  a  middle-western  plant  found  a 
good  market  in  San  Francisco  for  dressed  poultry. 
After  a  few  experimental  shipments  he  sent  a  man 
there  to  look  after  the  dressed  poultry  business  on 
the  coast  and  one  day  mentioned  to  his  chief  that 
this  had  developed  into  a  nice  profitable  venture. 

It  was  the  first  father  had  heard  of  it.  "You'll  not 
make  any  money  shipping  poultry  to  San  Francisco," 
he  assured  the  manager. 


"I  RAISE  BETTER  MEN"  157 

"But  we're  making  money  at  it  now,"  was  the 
rejoinder. 

"You'll  not  make  money  on  it  in  the  long  run." 

"Do  you  want  me  to  stop  shipping  and  bring  that 
man  back  here?" 

"You'll  not  make  any  money  at  it." 

"I  think  we  can  make  money  at  it,  Mr.  Swift.  Do 
you  want  me  to  stop  it?" 

"Oh,  let's  talk  about  something  else,"  suggested 
the  boss. 

For  a  long  while  we  made  money  at  it.  The  man- 
ager was  right,  even  though  father  had  been  so  sure 
about  it.  His  unwillingness  to  order  a  manager  to 
go  against  his  own  judgment  was  one  reason  why 
he  built  up  throughout  the  world  a  corps  of  repre- 
sentatives who  handled  his  affairs  superlatively  well. 


CHAPTER  IX 


THE  FORBIDDEN  YARDSTICK 

ALL  his  life  G.  F.  Swift  was  developing  at  a 
l  prodigious  pace,  developing  in  mind  and  skill 
and  knowledge.  Quite  as  naturally  as  a  boy  attain- 
ing manhood  loses  his  awe  toward  many  unremark- 
able adults  who  a  few  years  before  towered  above 
him,  so  father  found  his  standards  always  changing. 

Men  whose  technical  skill  at  one  time  represented 
his  highest  ideals  of  attainment  became  a  few  years 
later  to  his  fast-marching  mind  a  pack  of  fogeys. 
His  own  development  had  meanwhile  gone  to  a  point 
far  beyond  the  ken  of  the  mossbacked  gentry. 

First  and  last  a  good  many  of  his  men,  most  of 
them  a  deal  younger  than  their  employer,  left  him 
because  they  had  failed  to  keep  within  hailing  dis- 
tance as  he  progressed.  It  took  a  nimble  wit  and  a 
lust  for  hard  work  to  hold  that  pace.  Not  that  he 
expected  every  man  to  keep  up  with  him.  But  the 
man  in  a  key  position — be  he  a  department  head  or  a 
superintendent  or  a  clerk  in  the  president's  office — 
that  man  kept  step  or  stepped  out. 

Only  a  good  man  could  suit  him  for  long.  Father 
was  sizing  his  people  up  all  the  time.  He  watched 
their  performances  in  comparison  with  one  another 
and  in  the  light  of  what  he  knew  about  their  abilities. 

158 


THE  FORBIDDEN  YARDSTICK  159 

"The  best  a  man  ever  did  shouldn't  be  his  yard- 
stick for  the  rest  of  his  life,"  was  the  maxim  and  the 
working  rule  by  which  he  managed  his  men.  The 
department  head  or  superintendent  who  used  that 
forbidden  yardstick  was  not  worth  keeping. 

Even  more  than  in  developing  executives — and  he 
excelled  at  it — G.  F.  Swift's  knack  of  dealing  with 
human  beings  appeared  in  his  work  with  the  rank 
and  file  of  his  employees.  After  all,  it  is  easier  to 
build  up  alert,  ambitious  individuals  into  competent 
executives  and  managers  than  it  is  to  get  a  reasonable 
degree  of  work  and  intelligence  out  of  the  ninety- 
seven  per  cent  of  employees  who  never  develop  the 
capacity  for  authority  and  who  never  can.  For  the 
individual  of  managerial  caliber  is  the  exception  and 
will  do  his  best  to  help  you  push  him  ahead.  The 
majority  of  inert  people  on  the  pay  roll  have  an 
uncanny  gift  for  using  just  enough  gumption  to  hold 
their  jobs  and  win  little  promotions,  but  they  never 
show  the  traits  which  bring  a  man  major  responsi- 
bilities and  major  rewards. 

The  man  of  initiative  and  common  sense  quickly 
gains  enough  experience  to  appreciate  the  reasons 
behind  his  own  promotions  and  reprimands.  But 
the  fellow  down  in  the  lower  ranks  of  the  business 
is  usually  more  of  an  individualist.  He  lacks  the 
training;  and  he  has  never  tasted  the  rewards  which 
come  to  one  who  subordinates  personal  preferences 
to  the  group's  welfare. 

Whether  it  was  in  the  earlier  days  when  father  was 


160  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

dealing  direct  with  his  workmen  and  clerks  or 
whether  it  was  in  the  later  years  when  he  could  plan 
only  the  general  policies,  he  displayed  a  genius  for 
handling  employees.  To  people  in  Swift  &  Com- 
pany who  did  not  know  him  well,  or  who  had  not 
worked  with  us  long  enough  to  understand  what  was 
at  the  bottom  of  his  relationship  with  employees,  the 
head  of  the  business  sometimes  seemed  an  unpleas- 
ant, hot-tempered  boss.  He  was  unquestionably  sar- 
castic. Sarcasm  was  his  tool  for  keeping  his  sub- 
ordinates alert  and  free  from  mistakes  which  should 
not  be  repeated. 

But  his  irritability  (as  it  seemed  to  some  em- 
ployees) arose  out  of  disappointment.  He  was  really 
disappointed,  with  a  sense  of  personal  error,  when 
he  found  a  weakness  in  an  employee  who  he  had  not 
expected  would  have  that  particular  failing. 

One  plan  he  followed  constantly  to  minimize 
expensive  errors  was  to  get  reports  on  all  claims 
allowed  our  customers.  These  reports  came  to  him 
on  large  sheets  with  brief  particulars  of  each  claim. 
Each  summary  described  the  error  behind  the  claim 
and  told  who  had  made  it. 

Whenever  he  found  a  few  unoccupied  minutes  in 
the  day,  he  sent  his  office  boy  for  a  claim-sheet 
offender.  Into  his  office  would  march  some  clerk  he 
had  never  seen  before.  The  culprit  always  knew, 
from  the  time  the  claim  was  allowed,  that  eventually 
he  would  be  personally  called  to  account  by  his  chief. 

Father  would  sit  there  for  a  moment  sizing  up 


THE  FORBIDDEN  YARDSTICK  161 

the  man  responsible  for  the  loss.  To  the  clerk  it 
unquestionably  looked  as  if  his  employer  was  rack- 
ing his  brain  for  a  refinement  of  ingenious  punish- 
ment. Actually  the  boss  was  looking  him  over  to 
see  whether  he  looked  like  a  man  who  would  habit- 
ually make  mistakes  and  whether  he  was  worth  trying 
to  save.  His  tendency  was  to  err  on  the  side  of  char- 
ity, to  give  the  man  a  chance  to  make  good. 

After  a  moment  he  would  speak.  "So  you're  the 
young  fellow  who  ordered  out  five  hundred  pounds 
of  leaf  lard  and  two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  of 
compound  when  a  customer  had  bought  two  fifty  of 
lard  and  five  hundred  of  compound?" 

"Yes,  Mr.  Swift." 

"I  suppose  you  know  the  customer  claimed  he 
used  it  up  just  the  same  way  as  if  he'd  got  what  he 
ordered  and  we  had  to  bill  it  to  him  the  way  he 
ordered  instead  of  the  way  we  shipped?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"I  suppose  you  think  it  doesn't  make  any  difference 
if  you  make  mistakes  like  that.  Doesn't  make  any 
difference  to  a  big  rich  company  like  Swift's  if  it 
has  to  allow  a  customer  a  claim  of  $13.47.  We'd  be 
in  a  fine  fix  if  everybody  made  that  kind  of  a  mis- 
take once  a  month,  wouldn't  we?" 

The  employee  who  emerged  from  the  encounter 
with  the  least  damage  and  still  on  the  pay  roll  was  the 
one  who  did  not  try  to  excuse  the  error,  who  acknowl- 
edged it  and  showed  by  his  demeanor  that  he  recog- 
nized it  as  a  serious  offense  which  he  would  carefully 


1 62  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

guard  against  in  future.  The  man  who  tried  to  be 
flippant,  or  who  took  the  attitude  that  anyone  was 
likely  to  make  mistakes  and  that  a  certain  number 
of  mistakes  was  allowable  to  any  man — that  fellow 
was  likely  to  be  through  in  a  hurry. 

Father  did  not  consider  any  mistakes  allowable  in 
a  well-managed  business.  That  was  his  base  on  which 
he  built  the  whole  structure.  He  knew  that  errors 
would  continue  to  be  made.  But  none  were  allow- 
able and  no  one  would  be  retained  who  showed  too 
strong  a  tendency  to  lose  us  money. 

This  is  one  of  the  really  sound  principles  of  busi- 
ness management.  No  mistakes  are  allowable  and 
every  mistake  must  be  regarded  as  a  serious  lapse. 
If  any  other  attitude  is  taken  toward  errors,  then 
there  is  no  controlling  them. 

It  is  always  necessary  to  draw  a  definite  line  some- 
where. It  is  impossible  to  draw  a  definite  line  on 
errors  unless  it  is  drawn  right  at  the  source.  Allow 
it  leeway  in  the  slightest  and  it  will  move  steadily 
away  in  the  direction  of  more  mistakes.  And  it  is 
mistakes  which  lose  money  for  a  business. 

If  a  concern  is  engaged  in  a  sound  line  of  business 
and  if  some  fundamental  change  such  as  a  new  and 
monopolized  invention  which  could  not  be  prophe- 
sied does  not  render  it  suddenly  unsound,  then  it  may 
in  general  be  said  that  it  will  always  make  money 
except  when  someone  makes  a  mistake.  The  mistake 
may  be  one  of  judgment,  of  wastefulness,  of  careless- 
ness, or  whatnot.    It  may  at  the  time  seem  important 


THE  FORBIDDEN  YARDSTICK  163 

or  unimportant.  But  the  most  basic  mistake  of  all  is 
to  condone  mistakes. 

Twenty  or  thirty  years  ago  it  was  no  doubt  easier 
to  hold  employees  to  a  strict  accountability.  Disci- 
pline in  the  office  and  in  the  packing  house  was  almost 
as  strict  as  discipline  in  the  family.  And  back  in  the 
'80s  and  the  '90s  the  head  of  the  family  was  obeyed 
or  there  was  real  trouble!  Discipline  was  a  part  of 
the  working  code  rather  than  a  tradition  of  bygone 
days. 

Father  was  a  strict  disciplinarian.  Not  always  did 
his  disciplinary  measures  bring  about  the  results  he 
had  counted  on.  But  he  kept  working  along  the  same 
lines  nevertheless. 

He  was  walking  through  the  cellars  at  one  of  our 
western  plants  one  day  with  the  superintendent  when 
a  negro  trucker  passed,  whistling  loudly.  "Stop  him 
whistling,  stop  him,"  the  chief  directed.  So  the  super- 
intendent called,  "Hey,  Sam,  no  whistling  on  the 
job" — which  was  the  first  ever  heard  of  this  on  the 
plant  in  question.  And  the  chief  added,  as  explana- 
tion to  the  surprised  negro,  "If  everyone  whistles, 
we'll  have  no  order." 

A  few  minutes  later  they  went  to  the  hog-killing 
floor.  The  hog  house  was  small  for  the  plant  and 
everything  was  done  by  hand. 

The  gang  was  composed  of  stalwarts  every  one — 
most  of  them  southern  negroes,  with  a  few  Irish  at 
pivotal  points.  The  day's  schedule  was  six  thousand 
hogs,  a  big  day's  work.     Someone  had  started  the 


164  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

negroes  singing  when  the  whistle  blew  that  morning 
and  the  work  had  been  turned  out  six  hundred  hogs 
an  hour,  ten  a  minute,  right  from  the  start. 

"Here!  Here!  Stop  it!"  the  astounded  visitor  had 
to  shout  to  make  himself  heard  over  the  ringing 
chorus  of  "Down  in  Mobile."  So  the  superintendent 
called  the  foreman,  who  immediately  silenced  the 
singers. 

"That  will  slow  up  the  work,  Mr.  Swift,"  the 
superintendent  told  him.  "We  want  to  get  out  six 
thousand  hogs  today  and  we'll  never  do  it  without 
the  singing.     It  helps  those  boys  work." 

"Never  mind,"  directed  his  employer.  "I  think 
we  can  kill  the  hogs  without  any  musical  accompani- 
ment. Yes  sir,  we  turn  out  a  lot  of  pork  at  Chicago 
without  singing." 

"You  have  conveyor  chains,  rolling  tables,  all  the 
other  facilities  at  Chicago  for  speeding  up  the  work. 
If  you  need  to  turn  out  a  little  more  than  the  usual 
production,  you  speed  up  the  conveyors  a  little  and 
the  men  speed  up  to  keep  pace." 

"I  think  we  don't  need  the  singing.  It's  bad  for 
discipline,"  was  the  final  word  on  the  subject. 

But  along  later  in  the  day  as  the  visitor  and  the 
plant  manager  entered  the  superintendent's  office, 
that  practical  soul  took  from  his  desk  the  production 
reports  which  had  been  accumulating  during  the  day. 
They  showed  that  from  the  moment  the  singing  had 
stopped  hogs  had  been  killed  at  the  rate  of  four 
hundred  an  hour  instead  of  six  hundred  as  before. 


THE  FORBIDDEN  YARDSTICK  165 

He  handed  the  sheet  to  his  chief  without  comment. 

"Hm,"  came  the  decision  after  a  considerable 
pause.  "Hm.  I  guess  maybe  there's  a  little  some- 
thing in  what  you  say.  Maybe  you  might  let  those 
boys  sing  when  they've  got  an  extra  lot  of  work  to 
do.  But — "  regretfully — "it's  mighty  hard  on  dis- 
cipline." 

One  of  the  cardinal  principles  which  enabled  him 
to  raise  better  men  than  he  could  hire  was  his  sparing 
use  of  compliments.  He  believed  in  seldom  prais- 
ing. His  creed  held  that  if  a  man  does  good  work 
he  deserves  no  praise  for  it,  it  is  exactly  what  he  is 
paid  to  do.  If  his  work  is  exceptionally  fine,  still 
don't  praise  him.  Give  him  a  raise  and  a  better 
job  with  more  responsibility  at  the  first  chance.  Thus 
you  give  the  man  the  benefit  he  has  earned  by  his 
ability.  You  have,  as  an  employer,  advantaged  your- 
self of  the  employee's  capacity.  And  you  haven't 
spoiled  him  by  telling  him  he  is  good. 

The  good  man  who  came  to  us  from  another  con- 
cern was  likely  to  have  been  told  that  he  was  good 
and  consequently  to  have  had  his  head  just  a  trifle 
inflated.  The  man  who  knows  he  is  good  is  likely 
to  be  a  bit  sensitive  about  how  he  is  treated.  He 
requires  an  amount  of  dignity  to  support  his  best 
work.  Father  had  his  attention  centered  only  on 
getting  the  work  done  and  he  had  no  time  to  think 
of  useless  frills.  He  did  not  build  up  non-essentials 
by  compliments.  That  is  one  way  he  raised  better 
men  than  he  could  hire. 


166  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

He  tried  his  best  to  hold  his  managers  to  the  same 
point  of  view.  He  did  not  want  them  upsetting  the 
apple-cart  by  giving  out  praise.  Once  at  St.  Joseph 
he  was  going  over  the  plant  with  the  manager  when 
they  encountered  a  negro  janitor  engaged  in  some 
job  which,  while  it  had  to  be  done,  yet  was  outside  a 
janitor's  regular  duties.  The  manager  praised  him 
for  his  alertness  in  seeing  the  need  and  pitching  into 
the  job  on  his  own  hook.  As  they  walked  away  he 
said  to  his  chief,  "There's  one  of  the  best  men  on 
this  plant.  He's  always  surprising  me  by  doing  bet- 
ter than  I  can  expect  anyone  to  do." 

They  walked  on  for  a  minute  or  two  in  silence. 
Then  from  the  depths  of  his  experience  the  older 
man  offered  his  comment:  "You're  going  to  spoil  a 
good  boy — spoil  a  good  boy,  Mr.  Donovan." 

At  another  plant  he  was  going  through  with  a 
younger  man,  a  foreman  who  has  since  become  a 
plant  superintendent.  As  they  were  standing  by  a 
long  zinc  table  where  they  were  doing  the  scraping 
by  hand,  he  inquired,  "Mr.  Pratt,  where  do  you  think 
these  hogs  should  be  cleaned?" 

"Right  here  where  they  are  being  cleaned,"  an- 
swered the  foreman. 

"We  don't  do  it  that  way  at  Chicago,"  retorted 
his  boss — this  was  the  reply  he  used  to  squelch  any- 
one at  any  of  our  other  plants  who  stood  up  for  an 
inferior  way  of  doing.  Chicago  was  at  that  time 
supposed  to  include  all  packing-house  virtues  devel- 
oped to  date.    The  other  plants  were  the  provinces. 


THE  FORBIDDEN  YARDSTICK  167 

"There  are  a  lot  of  things  you  don't  do  at  Chi- 
cago," replied  Pratt.  "We're  scraping  them  while 
they're  still  hot  from  the  scalding  water.  At  Chi- 
cago they  scrape  the  hogs  on  the  rail.  I  think  this 
is  a  great  deal  better  than  the  Chicago  way." 

"Young  man,  you're  right,"  his  employer  admitted. 
This  was  the  highest  praise  he  could  bring  himself 
to  administer. 

The  veteran  who  went  through  this  experience 
laughed  about  it  many  years  later.  And  he  com- 
mented: "I  believe  this  is  the  only  time  Mr.  Swift 
ever  agreed  with  me  about  anything  we  discussed! 
Next  time  I  was  in  Chicago,  a  few  months  later,  I 
observed  that  he  had  them  handling  their  hogs  by 
our  method." 

It  is  noteworthy  that  the  chief  did  not  tell  the  man 
his  idea  had  been  adopted.  He  knew  the  originator 
would  see  it  some  time  at  Chicago.  Meanwhile  there 
was  no  use  acting  as  if  the  man  had  done  something 
to  make  a  fuss  over. 

But  if  G.  F.  Swift  was  sparing  of  praise,  he  was 
lavish  with  advice  about  better  ways  to  do  things. 
He  never  overlooked  an  opportunity  to  instruct. 

"How  do  you  think  these  hogs  are  dressed?"  he 
inquired  of  a  plant  man  on  another  trip. 

"I  think  the  day's  killing  is  well  dressed,"  the  em- 
ployee told  him. 

"I  beg  to  differ  with  you.  That's  all," — and  he 
waved  the  younger  man  back  to  his  work. 

Next  day  the  plant  man  received  a  letter  from  the 


168  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

plant  superintendent,  with  the  president's  criticism 
attached.  Busy  as  he  was,  father  had  gone  into  great 
detail  about  how  the  hogs  should  be  opened  straight 
through  the  center  of  the  aitch-bone,  split  to  show 
the  loin  and  fin  bones  equally  on  each  side  of  the  hog, 
and  the  button  of  the  neck  split  in  the  center.  It 
was  a  constructive  set  of  instructions  on  one  opera- 
tion of  pork  packing.  Giving  instructions  took  up  a 
much  larger  part  of  his  usual  day  than  did  praise. 

One  thing  he  insisted  on  was  absolute  honesty. 
Time  and  again  he  came  to  my  desk  or  called  me  to 
his  and  pointed  out  some  slip-up  in  shipping  dates 
or  a  let-down  in  quality  or  something  else  which  had 
the  appearance  of  a  sharp  corner  having  been  cut 
to  get  an  advantage  for  Swift  &  Company.  He 
would  lecture  me  on  the  specific  mistake.  But  always 
he  would  end  up  by  talking  about  the  need  for  being 
absolutely  fair  and  honest  all  of  the  time.  "We 
want  character  to  go  with  our  goods.  And  sixteen 
ounces  is  a  Swift  pound."  I  don't  know  how  many 
times  he  said  this  to  me;  it  must  have  run  well  up 
into  the  hundreds. 

So  it  is  not  surprising  that  in  the  early  days  espe- 
cially, before  the  spirit  of  fair  dealing  had  been 
absorbed  by  all  of  our  people,  a  good  many  men  got 
through  in  a  hurry.  Usually  it  was  for  a  lie  or  for 
misrepresenting  to  a  customer.  Father  had  no  use 
for  anyone  who  had  any  other  standard  than  abso- 
lute honesty  and  sixteen  ounces  to  the  pound. 

I  recall  one  man  who  was  fired  for  stealing.    He 


THE  FORBIDDEN  YARDSTICK  169 

appealed  to  the  front  office.     "I've  worked  for  you 
for  twenty  years,  Mr.  Swift,"  he  pleaded. 

"You  stole,  didn't  you?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"You  worked  for  me  twenty  years  too  long  then," 
was  the  decision. 

There  was  another  man,  manager  of  a  branch 
market,  who  got  to  drinking  and  committing  a  lot 
of  the  faults  which  so  often  accompany  this  overin- 
dulgence.   He  was  sent  for. 

"Mr.  So-and-So,  how  do  you  like  working  for 
Swift  &  Company?" 

"Oh,  very  well,  Mr.  Swift."  The  employee  went 
on  to  enlarge  on  the  virtues  of  the  house. 

"You  like  your  job,  do  you?" 

"Oh,  yes,  I'm  very  well  satisfied.     I'm  trying  to 

do  my  very  best "  and  so  forth.    The  chief 

waited  for  him  to  finish. 

"Well,  you've  been  doing  a  lot  of  things  you  hadn't 
ought  to,  a  lot  of  things  we  don't  stand  for.  I'm 
glad  you  liked  your  job,  for  you  ain't  got  it  now." 
And  the  man  was  through. 

This  kind  of  discipline  was  not  inspired  by  any 
desire  to  be  unkind.  There  was  none  of  the  cat-and- 
mouse  idea  in  inviting  the  man  to  come  from  his 
eastern  branch  to  be  fired  and  in  asking  so  solicitously 
after  his  liking  for  his  job.  Father  knew  the  story 
would  run  through  the  whole  organization  and  serve 
as  a  reminder  that  employees  were  not  encouraged 
to  behave  themselves  in  ways  which  interfered  with 


170  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

their  usefulness.     It  was  stern  discipline,  but  effec- 
tive. 

Yet,  rigid  as  were  his  ideas  of  discipline,  he 
allowed  them  to  relax  for  the  worker  who  had  earned 
special  consideration  or  about  whom  there  was  some 
reason  for  not  holding  to  too  high  a  standard  of 
expectation.  There  was  a  coachman  who  was  dis- 
covered getting  away  with  a  little  money. 

Mother  simply  sent  over  to  the  cashier  at  the  office 
when  she  needed  money.  This  had  long  been  the 
custom.  The  cashier  handed  over  the  money  and 
charged  it  to  "G.  F.  Swift  Personal."  Almost  any- 
one was  sent  over  from  the  house  on  occasion  and 
the  cash  was  always  handed  over — sometimes  in 
rather  larger  amounts  than  the  servant  who  got  it 
was  used  to  handling. 

When  the  coachman  was  discovered  knocking 
down  money  under  this  plan,  he  decamped.  Father 
had  him  brought  back  by  the  police.  And  then  he 
began  thinking  about  how  unbusinesslike  the  whole 
arrangement  had  been,  how  unfairly  it  placed  temp- 
tation in  the  servants'  ways.  He  couldn't  keep  the 
man  in  his  employ.  But  he  dismissed  the  charges 
against  him  and  worked  out  a  voucher  system  which 
made  it  unlikely  that  any  such  thing  would  happen 
again. 

Another  time  the  head  of  the  ice  department  went 
to  his  chief  to  tell  his  suspicions  that  an  old-time 
employee  assigned  to  a  minor  but  trusted  place  in 
his  department  had  been  dishonest.     The  old-timer 


THE  FORBIDDEN  YARDSTICK  171 

was  being  used  to  pay  off  the  ice-harvest  gangs, 
always  in  cash.  There  was  at  the  time  no  way  to 
check  up  whether  his  payments  and  his  amounts 
drawn  for  the  purpose  tallied. 

"I  think  he's  taking  all  of  the  ice-gang  pay-roll 
money  that's  left  after  he  pays  off,"  the  manager 
explained.  "He  isn't  turning  any  in.  Of  course  he 
may  be  carrying  over  the  surplus  from  one  gang  and 
using  it  to  pay  the  next,  but  I  doubt  it." 

"The  chances  are  he  ain't,"  father  admitted.  "You 
know,  he  never  had  a  very  good  education.  Don't 
know  the  difference  between  his  money  and  mine. 
But  he's  been  a  good  faithful  servant  here  and  we 
can't  expect  maybe  that  he  ought  to  be  trusted  with 
cash.  He's  always  got  a  job  here,  though,  as  long 
as  he  lives.  We  may  have  to  guard  him  from  temp- 
tation, but  he's  always  got  a  job  here." 

I  think  it  is  generally  agreed  by  the  men  who 
worked  with  him  that  Gustavus  F.  Swift  was  one  of 
the  fairest,  squarest  bosses  anyone  ever  had.  He 
treated  everyone  alike,  whether  the  employee  was  a 
member  of  his  family  or  someone  who  had  been 
placed  on  the  pay  roll  only  a  week  before.  Some 
of  us,  in  fact,  suspected  that  he  was  more, lenient  to 
the  ordinary  run  of  employees  than  he  was  to  his 
near  relatives. 

He  was  very  much  interested  in  the  personal  affairs 
of  his  people — a  goodly  amount  more  so  than  some 
employees  thought  was  any  of  his  business.  He  real- 
ized that  a  man's  personal  habits  had  a  great  deal 


172  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

to  do  with  his  ability  and  also  that  they  shed  light 
on  what  might  be  expected  of  the  individual.  When 
an  employee  got  a  share  of  Swift  stock,  the  presi- 
dent of  the  company  was  likely  to  check  up  a  year 
afterwards  to  see  if  he  still  had  it.  If  it  had  been 
transferred,  then  he  wanted  to  know  why. 

He  wished  his  people  to  own  stock.  He  was  a 
pioneer  in  bringing  this  about  in  a  big  way.  His 
was  the  first  large  concern  to  encourage  its  employees 
to  become  substantial  stockholders. 

A  typical  instance  of  the  way  he  did  it  was  when 
he  called  in  one  young  man  who  had  been  with  us 
for  about  a  year.  The  youngster  was  doing  well  and 
gave  every  indication  of  becoming  a  valuable  man. 
"Are  you  intending  to  stay  with  us?"  was  shot  at 
the  boy. 

"Yes,  Mr.  Swift." 

"Well,  you  seem  a  likely  sort  of  young  man.  May- 
be I'm  mistaken,  but  it  looks  to  me  as  if  you  might 
develop  into  someone  who'd  be  of  some  use  around 
here  if  you  stay.  Now,  I  want  to  have  my  young 
men  partners,  even  if  they  can't  do  it  in  a  big  way. 
Like  the  idea?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"We're  going  to  increase  our  capital  stock.  Got 
any  money?" 

"Only  about  two  hundred  dollars." 

"All  right.  You  can  buy  a  thousand  dollars  worth 
of  this  stock  if  you  want  to.  Pay  down  what  you 
can  and  give  me  your  note  for  the  rest.     I'll  carry 


THE  FORBIDDEN  YARDSTICK  173 

it  for  you  and  you  can  pay  me  off  as  fast  as  you're 
able." 

So  the  employee  got  the  stock.  He  still  has  it,  I 
think,  along  with  a  good  many  more  shares.  That 
he  was  a  likely  young  man  was  proved  when  he 
developed  into  a  department  head,  then  went  abroad 
in  charge  of  a  substantial  share  of  our  business. 

Father  never  overlooked  an  opportunity  to  place  a 
few  shares  of  stock  with  his  people.  When  there  was 
no  other  stock  available,  he  would  sell  a  little  of  his 
own  to  the  employee,  replacing  it  at  the  first  good 
opportunity.  But  all  of  the  time  he  kept  in  mind 
that  the  employee  who  is  a  partner  is  usually  the 
keenest  to  make  money  for  the  firm. 

Likewise  he  recognized  that  the  concern  which  is 
owned  by  a  very  large  number  of  shareholders  is 
more  stable  than  the  company  which  is  closely  held. 
And  its  stock  is  more  difficult  of  stock  market  man- 
ipulation. 

Next  in  desirability  as  stockholders  he  rated  cus- 
tomers. Swift  stock  was  originally  bought  by  eastern 
live-stock  and  meat  men  who  constituted  our  first 
body  of  customers,  the  nucleus  around  which  our 
dressed-beef  business  was  developed.  When  new  out- 
lets were  added,  either  as  dealers  or  as  agents,  the 
newcomers  were  given  the  opportunity  to  buy  a  few 
shares.  Thus  the  sales  organization  was  built  up 
with  an  undivided  loyalty  and  a  desire,  founded  on 
self-interest,  that  the  company  prosper. 

I  have  said  that  sarcasm  was  my  father's  working 


174  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

tool  in  handling  employees.  He  might  be  and  he 
generally  was  very  personal  in  his  remarks,  but  he 
meant  them  impersonally.  No  matter  how  hard  he 
jumped  us — I  got  just  as  large  a  share  of  this  as  any- 
one else — he  left  us  with  the  feeling  that  it  was  all 
deserved.  He  left  no  sting  but  he  left  us  convinced. 
No  matter  how  hard  he  might  jump,  no  matter  how 
wholly  unpleasant  he  might  be  in  the  tenor  and  tone 
of  his  remarks,  next  time  he  saw  the  employee  the 
storm  had  blown  over.  The  man  who  weathered  one 
such  talking-to  generally  got  through  any  of  its  suc- 
cessors without  having  his  feelings  seriously  abraded. 

Another  of  his  knacks  in  raising  better  men  than 
he  could  hire  was  his  ability  at  cross-examination. 
Whether  the  questioning  took  place  in  his  office  or 
at  home  or  at  the  employee's  desk  or  workbench,  the 
procedure  had  its  common  characteristics.  If  the 
chief  was  seated,  he  looked  as  if  he  had  been  poured 
into  his  chair.  He  slumped  down  with  his  weight 
on  the  small  of  his  back.  But  no  matter  how  indolent 
his  appearance,  his  lively  blue  eye  kept  roving. 

His  first  questions  would  be  so  unrelated  that  the 
employee  would  wonder  what  on  earth  the  boss  was 
driving  at.  His  succeeding  questions  would  begin  to 
shape  up  into  a  skeleton  so  that  the  man  began  to 
think  he  knew  what  it  was  all  about.  And  then, 
when  the  conclusion  seemed  right  ahead  and  the 
employee  felt  himself  safely  exonerated  of  all  blame, 
father  would  with  one  or  two  well-placed  queries 
turn  an  abrupt  corner  and  skewer  his  victim  neatly 


THE   FARM  HOUSE  AT   BARNSTABLE. 


G.   F.  SWIFT'S  ACCOUNTS,   1859-60,  RECORDING 
SALES  OF  MEAT  FROM  HIS   BUTCHER  CART. 


THE  FORBIDDEN  YARDSTICK  175 

on  the  sharp  point  of  the  cumulative  admissions 
which  conclusively  convicted  the  man  of  something 
he  had  not  even  known  he  was  suspected  of.  Never 
did  G.  F.  Swift's  questions  indicate  the  direction  int 
which  he  was  working,  until  he  had  the  answers  so 
well  in  hand  that  there  was  no  use  denying  his  con- 
clusions. His  method  might  conscientiously  be  rec- 
ommended to  any  earnest  prosecuting  attorney! 

But  if  his  questionings  were  devious,  his  instruc- 
tions to  employees  were  always  direct.  He  said  abso- 
lutely what  he  wanted  done,  in  as  clear-cut  a  way  as 
anyone  could  devise.  Then  he  left  it  to  the  employee 
to  work  out  how  he  would  get  the  results. 

He  was  the  driver,  the  dynamo  of  the  business. 
He  worked  his  men  hard  and  treated  them  fairly. 
From  time  to  time  I  have  heard  rumors  of  this  or 
that  employee  who  felt  himself  badly  treated  by 
father.  But  whenever  I  have  been  familiar  with  the 
facts,  they  have  been  all  on  the  employer's  side. 

One  instance  was  a  man  who  came  to  us  at  a  good- 
sized  salary  to  improve  our  office  routines.  He  was 
recommended  as  a  first-class  man  and  so  represented 
himself.  But  like  most  men  who  set  themselves  up 
as  experts,  he  soon  showed  that  he  knew  consider- 
ably less  than  the  good  practical  office  men  we  had 
with  us  all  of  the  time.    So  father  had  him  fired. 

Presently  he  appeared  at  the  front  office  and  was 
admitted.  He  was  tremendously  angry.  He  had, 
so  he  claimed,  been  hired  for  a  year — and  here  he 
was  fired  within  two  months.     "You're  not  getting 


176  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

the  results  you  said  you'd  get,  are  you?"  his  employer 
inquired  mildly. 

"Not  yet.    But  I  was  hired  for  a  year,  Mr.  Swift." 

"All  right,"  the  boss  assented — not  showing  by  his 
actions  or  manner  what  he  thought  of  someone  who 
failed  to  deliver  what  he  had  agreed  to,  but  demanded 
his  pay  just  the  same.  "You  go  over  to  Mr.  So-and-So 
in  the  packing  house.    He'll  have  a  job  for  you." 

A  telephone  message  got  there  ahead  of  the  office 
man.  When  the  one-year  employee  arrived,  he  was 
given  a  squeegee  and  instructions  to  keep  the  blood 
running  into  the  blood-gutters.  After  a  few  hours 
there  he  had  enough,  even  though  he  would  have 
been  drawing  his  stipulated  pay  as  an  office  expert. 

I  have  no  doubt  that  this  man  felt  terribly  mis- 
treated. There  are  instances  of  this  sort  which  give 
rise  to  lurid  tales  of  G.  F.  Swift's  terrible  temper 
and  rank  injustice.  But  I  have  never  found  a  basis 
for  it. 

Over  against  this  we  can  set  the  statement  of  a  man 
who  worked  with  him  from  the  start  at  Chicago — 
who  came  out,  in  fact,  from  the  slaughterhouse  of 
Anthony,  Swift  &  Company  at  Assonet  to  take  charge 
of  slaughtering  at  Chicago.  He  left  us  in  1897  to 
take  a  position  with  another  concern  which  could 
temporarily  afford  to  pay  several  times  as  much  as 
we  could  for  his  specialized  ability.  Thereafter  he 
had  no  connection  with  us,  no  reason  for  telling  a 
good  story  about  us. 

It  was  almost  thirty  years  after  he  left  us  and 


THE  FORBIDDEN  YARDSTICK  177 

fifteen  years  after  he  retired  to  live  on  his  income  that 
he  told  a  man  unconnected  with  our  business: 

"I  worked  for  G.  F.  Swift  for  twenty-seven  years. 
He  was  the  squarest  man  I  ever  worked  for.  All 
that  time  I  never  asked  him  what  he  was  going  to  pay 
me.  I  never  had  cause  to  complain.  If  you  worked 
well  for  him,  he  saw  that  you  got  what  you  deserved 
in  money  and  in  every  other  way." 

There,  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  basic  explanation  of 
father's  oft  repeated  assertion: 

"I  can  raise  better  men  than  I  can  hire." 


CHAPTER  X 

FIGHT  WHEN  YOU  MUST 

IF  INDUSTRIES  have  birthdays,  all  record  of 
them  is  usually  lost  in  the  snurled-out  memories 
of  the  dead.  Seldom  can  you  put  your  pencil  on 
the  yellowed  page  of  an  ancient  calendar  and  say, 
"On  this  day  began  such-and-so  an  industry."  These 
birthdays  are  difficult  to  mark. 

But  the  birth  record  of  the  packing  industry  may 
be  here  written  down  with  certainty  and  in  no  fear 
of  contradiction.  The  modern  dressed-meat  business 
was  born  on  the  day  after  the  Assonet  butcher  gang 
came  to  Chicago. 

It  was  an  autumn  day  of  1876.  These  Yankee 
butchers  who  had  worked  for  Anthony,  Swift  & 
Company  just  outside  Fall  River  came  on  a  Grand 
Trunk  pass,  as  was  general  in  those  times.  Next  day 
they  fell  to  their  task  in  the  shed — by  courtesy  called 
a  slaughterhouse — which  G.  F.  Swift  had  purchased 
from  one  Billy  Moore  in  preparation  for  their  arri- 
val. The  lard  refinery  of  the  business  he  founded 
stands  today  on  the  site  of  Billy  Moore's  unprenten- 
tious  establishment. 

The  day  can  be  marked  as  an  industrial  birthday 
because  the  beef  those  New  Englanders  slaughtered 
was  placed  in  a  box-car  and  shipped  back  to  their 

178 


FIGHT  WHEN  YOU  MUST  179 

home  town.  From  this  start  came  Swift  &  Com- 
pany. I  think  we  are  not  boastful  in  feeling  that 
with  it  began  the  modern  packing  industry. 

It  marked  a  definite  era  in  father's  business  career. 
It  meant  that  he  foreswore  the  live-stock  business 
which  during  most  of  his  life  had  been  his  liveli- 
hood. Instead  of  live  stock  as  the  merchandise  he 
dealt  in,  he  was  substituting  dressed  beef.  Because 
he  envisioned  an  industry  shipping  beef  from  Chi- 
cago to  feed  the  eastern  states,  he  made  dressed  meat 
an  industry. 

His  partner,  D.  M.  Anthony,  of  Fall  River,  agreed 
with  him — agreed,  however,  with  a  reservation  of 
enthusiasm.  Anthony  was  willing  to  risk  a  little 
money  on  his  partner's  idea,  but  he  was  not  giving 
up  his  profitable  going  business  to  undertake  a  cru- 
sade for  a  new  idea,  even  though  that  crusade  might, 
as  he  hoped,  turn  out  a  moneymaker. 

J.  A.  Hathaway,  father's  partner  in  his  other  firm 
of  Hathaway  &  Swift,  had  no  faith  in  the  idea.  It 
is  not  remarkable  that  he  had  not,  for  he  was  a  cattle 
dealer.  Anthony,  a  slaughterer  and  meat  dealer, 
might  have  been  expected  to  show  more  interest  in 
a  means  of  making  money  for  handlers  of  meat. 
Hathaway  could  only  look  on  it  as  an  unsound  plan. 
If  this  unsound  plan  should  by  any  chance  work  out 
successfully,  he  knew  it  must  ruin  his  line  of  busi- 
ness. It  is  human  nature  to  take  little  stock  in  any- 
thing which  might  cost  you  your  living. 

Hathaway  and  his  partner  differed  so  radically  on 


180  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

this  question  that  they  dissolved  their  partnership. 
Their  viewpoints  could  not  be  reconciled.  Hathaway 
came  to  Chicago,  paid  cash  for  his  partner's  share 
of  the  joint  interests,  and  returned  to  his  cattle  busi- 
ness at  Brighton.  He  brought  with  him  from  the 
East  a  financial  statement  on  which  to  base  the  set- 
tlement. "How  do  those  meet  your  figures?"  he 
inquired  of  his  partner. 

"I  don't  agree  with  you,"  the  younger  man  told 
him.    "I  don't  agree  with  you  at  all." 

"Why,  I'm  surprised,"  declared  Hathaway.  "I 
thought  I  had  my  figures  right.  How  far  are  we 
apart?" 

"One  cent.  Your  figures  give  me  one  cent  more 
than  I'm  entitled  to." 

So  they  parted  the  best  of  friends.  The  older  man 
brought  along  two  gold  watches.  One  of  these  he 
gave  to  father  and  the  other  to  mother.  They  were 
fine  watches  and  were  treasured  always  as  a  memento 
of  a  friendly  partnership  which  could  not  be  con- 
tinued. 

Gustavus  F.  Swift  was  not  a  man  who  had  many 
quarrels.  "Use  tact  when  you  can — fight  when  you 
have  to,"  was  one  of  his  working  maxims.  He  always 
preferred  going  around  a  difficulty  to  going  through 
it.  He  never  threw  a  challenge  into  the  other  fel- 
low's territory  until  he  had  made  up  his  mind  that 
arbitration  or  compromise  would  not  settle  the 
trouble. 

One  result  of  his  tactful  ways  was  that  he  had  only 


FIGHT  WHEN  YOU  MUST  181 

two  serious  labor  troubles  during  his  lifetime.  The 
first  of  these  was  in  the  '80s,  the  other  was  the  Pull- 
man strike  of  the  early  '90s.  With  neither  of  these 
was  he  specifically  concerned  as  an  opponent  of  the 
strikers'  demands.  But  when  the  strikes  came  and 
he  saw  that  tact  would  no  longer  serve,  he  swung  into 
the  job  of  fighting  with  every  resource  he  had. 

If  the  disputes  leading  to  these  affairs  had  arisen 
out  of  conditions  directly  under  his  control,  there 
would  have  been  no  strikes.  When,  however,  the 
strikes  threatened  his  prosperity  through  no  fault  of 
his  own,  then  he  proceeded  to  do  everything  he  could 
to  break  them. 

The  first  was  a  bitter  strike.  Particularly  in  those 
early  days,  father  could  not  afford  a  shutdown  and 
the  consequent  loss.  He  moved  into  the  stockyards 
men  who  would  work  in  spite  of  the  strike.  And 
he  got  his  foremen  to  exert  every  influence  to  keep 
their  men  at  work. 

He  was  pretty  well  recognized  as  a  leader  in 
breaking  that  strike.  Broken  it  was.  After  it  was 
over,  the  foremen  who  held  any  considerable  propor- 
tion of  their  men  were  noted  for  meritorious  serv- 
ice. Not  a  few  individuals  who  later  rose  to  impor- 
tant responsibilities  owed  their  promotions  to  the 
attention  they  attracted  by  holding  their  men  at  work. 

The  Pullman  strike  was  altogether  different.  It 
was  aimed  not  at  us  but  at  the  Pullman  Company. 
Its  net  result  was  to  prevent  the  free  movement  of 
freight — which    in   the   packing   business   means    a 


182  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

shutdown  in  short  order.  The  strikers  were  deter- 
mined that  cars  should  not  move.  G.  F.  Swift  had  a 
stubborn  streak  when  anyone  tried  to  tell  him  what 
he  could  not  do.  His  determination  matched  the 
strikers'.  He  refused  to  be  buffeted  about  in  the 
role  of  innocent  bystander. 

The  crisis  as  it  affected  us  came  one  day  when  get- 
ting the  cars  rolling  was  especially  important  to  us — 
it  was  July  3,  or  the  day  before  Memorial  Day,  or 
some  such  occasion.  The  trainmen  of  the  railroad 
which  switched  cars  in  the  yards  had  been  intimi- 
dated. Trunk  railroads,  however,  were  under  United 
States  military  protection.  If  the  cars  were  once 
placed  on  trunk  line  tracks  we  were  reasonably  sure 
they  would  reach  their  destinations. 

So  we  organized  an  impromptu  train  crew,  with 
guards,  to  move  the  cars  from  our  loading  docks  and 
turn  them  over  to  the  Michigan  Central.  Richard 
Fitzgerald,  president  of  the  Chicago  Junction  Rail- 
way, lent  us  a  switch  engine.  An  old  employee  who 
knew  the  workings  of  a  locomotive  served  as  engi- 
neer. The  rest  of  the  crew  was  made  up  of  one  or 
two  high  officials,  such  as  the  general  superintendent, 
and  the  whole  Swift  family,  including  father. 

To  the  accompaniment  of  jeers  and,  be  it  confessed, 
an  occasional  brickbat,  we  switched  a  train  of  refrig- 
erator cars  out  of  the  stockyards  onto  the  tracks  of 
the  Michigan  Central.  There  a  yard  engine  was 
waiting  to  take  them.  Then  we  all  went  back  on 
the  engine  and  tender  and  repeated  the  operation. 


FIGHT  WHEN  YOU  MUST  183 

Feeling  ran  against  us  among  those  who  sympathized 
with  the  Pullman  strikers.  A  few  of  our  empty 
refrigerator  cars  were  burned  up  and  a  few  cars  of 
beef  likewise. 

But  the  meat  kept  moving  out  of  the  Yards — and 
when  President  Cleveland  called  out  the  United 
States  troops  from  Fort  Sheridan  to  protect  lives  and 
property,  the  strike  was  soon  broken.  It  was  a  daring 
move  for  a  man  in  political  office.  I  can  think  of 
few  who  would  have  done  it,  however  much  right 
was  on  the  side  of  law  and  order  as  against  the 
strikers. 

Difficulties  with  transportation  had  been  father's 
daily  portion  almost  from  the  time  he  came  to  Chi- 
cago. As  soon  as  he  began  shipping  dressed  beef  he 
ran  into  snags  which  were  skillfully  placed  in  his 
way.  The  railroads,  in  short,  did  not  want  his 
dressed-beef  business.  They  wanted  to  continue  haul- 
ing live  stock,  which  gave  them  about  double  the 
tonnage.  The  basic  idea  of  slaughtering  at  Chicago 
and  shipping  beef  east  was  to  avoid  having  to  pay 
freight  on  the  inedible  portions  of  the  cattle  and  to 
avoid  the  loss  of  weight  to  the  cattle,  due  to  the  hard- 
ships of  travel.  But  the  railroads  had  not  yet  been 
educated  to  an  appreciation  that  what  is  economically 
sound  is  in  the  long  run  most  profitable  to  the  car- 
riers. It  was  this  lack  of  understanding  which  even- 
tually brought  upon  them  the  first  governmental  reg- 
ulation. 

Rate  making  in  those  days  of  the  '70s  and  early 


184  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

'80s  was  almost  entirely  a  matter  of  bargaining 
between  the  individual  shipper  and  the  carrier.  The 
Interstate  Commerce  Act  had  not  yet  appeared.  And 
the  carriers  would  not  bargain  on  dressed-meat  rates. 
They  simply  set  a  high  rate  and  sat  tight. 

This  was  the  group  of  old  railroads,  comprising 
the  Trunk  Line  Association,  which  have  the  direct 
routes  from  Chicago  to  the  East.  They  got  the  live- 
stock business,  of  course,  for  the  shorter  the  haul  the 
less  shrinkage  in  weight  of  cattle  on  the  hoof.  The 
roads  which  reached  the  East  by  roundabout  routes 
got  none. 

The  Grand  Trunk,  running  through  Canada,  had 
practically  no  live-stock  business.  So  its  officials  were 
delighted  to  get  a  share  of  the  traffic  in  meat  since 
they  could  not  have  it  alive.  They  were  glad  to  set 
a  fair  rate  on  dressed  beef.  They  welcomed  the  result- 
ing revenue.  One  other  railroad  used  occasionally 
to  accept  a  little  of  our  dressed  beef  for  the  East, 
but  only  in  small  quantities  at  the  low  rate. 

Father  used  to  meet  in  New  York  the  chairman  of 
the  Trunk  Line  Association,  a  German  named  Albert 
Fink.  He  and  Fink  would  argue  the  dressed-meat 
rate  by  the  hour  and  never  get  anywhere.  Fink  had 
his  orders  from  the  railroads  and  could  not  budge  an 
inch. 

Because  father  saw  that  the  only  way  he  could  pos- 
sibly get  anywhere  was  by  tact,  he  used  tact  for  ten 
years,  or  as  close  an  approach  to  tact  as  was  possible 
under  the  circumstances.     Meanwhile  his  beef  for 


FIGHT  WHEN  YOU  MUST  185 

points  around  New  York  City  was  turned  over  by 
the  Grand  Trunk  to  American  roads  at  Buffalo  and 
for  New  England  points  at  other  junctions  nearer  to 
this  market.  The  American  roads  charged  local 
rates  on  these  hauls,  which  made  them  tremendously 
expensive  as  freight  went  in  those  days. 

He  kept  this  up  until  the  Interstate  Commerce  Act 
was  passed  in  1887.  Then  the  railroads  had  to  take 
his  commodities  at  a  fair  rate  and  had  to  desist  from 
other  practices  which  had  stood  in  the  way  of  freely 
shipping  meat  to  the  East.  It  closed  a  long  argu- 
ment between  father  and  Fink! 

His  serious  difficulties  in  shipping  beef  had  started 
almost  simultaneously  with  the  first  trouble  on  trunk 
line  rates.  G.  F.  Swift  had  shipped  some  dressed 
beef  experimentally  in  box  cars  in  the  winter  of 
'75-'76.  He  had  not  been  at  it  long  before  the  rate 
situation  first  blocked  him,  then  turned  him  to  the 
Grand  Trunk. 

Technical  difficulties  of  carrying  dressed  meat  a 
thousand  miles  in  all  weathers  were,  however,  very 
real.  The  first  car  of  beef  he  shipped  was  an  ordi- 
nary box  car  with  a  temporary  framing  built  inside 
to  suspend  the  carcasses  from.  It  was  shipped  in 
cool  weather  and  the  meat  arrived  sweet  and  edible. 

Then  followed  experiments,  directed  at  first  to 
mastering  the  difficulties  of  winter  shipping.  A  box 
car  of  beef  might  start  out  in  zero  weather  and  the 
meat  be  frozen  stiff  before  it  left  the  Chicago  city 
limits.    In  Indiana  it  might  encounter  a  warm  wave 


186  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

and  thaw  out.  Then  it  might  freeze  again  and  thaw 
again  before  arriving  at  Fall  River  or  Clinton.  After 
this  it  would  be  in  a  good  deal  worse  condition  than 
if  it  had  gone  all  the  way  either  frozen  or  chilled. 

Cars  were  sent  carrying  small  stoves  with  a  man 
along  to  tend  the  stoves.  Various  wrappings  and 
packings  were  tried.  And  finally  the  conclusion  was 
plain  that  the  beef  lost  in  no  way  except  appearance 
if  it  arrived  frozen  and  was  thawed  out  gradually. 

This  was  in  the  winter  before  the  butcher-gang 
came  from  Assonet  to  work  in  Billy  Moore's  slaugh- 
terhouse. The  cattle  that  father  sent  dressed  this 
winter  were  killed  for  him  by  G.  H.  Hammond  for 
a  slaughtering  toll.  When  spring  came  in  1876  he 
gave  up  the  experiment  for  a  few  months  and  went 
back  to  shipping  cattle. 

Hammond  was,  I  think,  the  first  man  to  ship  beef 
commercially  in  refrigerator  cars.  He  had  at  this 
time  a  handful  of  refrigerator  cars  which  he  used 
for  shipping  beef  east.  He  was  reasonably  success- 
ful at  it  and  had  made  a  modest  start  toward  attain- 
ing what  father  had  in  mind. 

But  G.  F.  Swift's  energy  and  vision  were  destined 
to  make  a  bigger  thing  of  it  than  Hammond  could 
make  it.  Hammond  was  using  the  idea  as  an  auxiliary 
money-maker,  something  that  yielded  him  a  good 
steady  little  profit  month  in  and  month  out.  Father, 
once  he  had  the  device  mastered,  used  it  to  build  an 
industry  such  as  had  never  been  dreamed  of  before. 

His  first  effort  was  to  get  the  railroads  to  build 


FIGHT  WHEN  YOU  MUST  187 

cars.  The  railroads  as  a  class  did  not  want  dressed- 
beef  traffic,  much  less  were  they  going  to  encourage 
it.  Finally  it  narrowed  down  to  the  Grand  Trunk. 
But  the  Grand  Trunk  would  not  build  the  refriger- 
ator cars,  even  if  guaranteed  a  steady  volume  of  traf- 
fic for  them  summer  and  winter.  It  was  experimental. 

Development  of  a  satisfactory  refrigerator  car  was 
being  pushed  from  two  sides  at  that  time.  On  the 
one  hand  was  the  need  to  carry  dressed  beef  from 
Middle  West  to  East.  But  far  more  urgent  was  the 
demand  for  cars  which  would  enable  the  farmers  of 
the  Pacific  Coast  to  carry  to  eastern  markets  the 
fruits  which  they  had  in  such  abundance  but  could 
not  sell.  The  coast  had  been  growing  in  population 
and  in  fruit  culture  since  the  transcontinental  rail- 
roads had  been  completed  only  a  few  years  before. 
It  was  pressing  hard  for  some  means  to  market  the 
perishable  products  of  its  fruit  farms. 

Outside  the  fruit  belts  of  the  United  States,  peo- 
ple seem  to  think  of  the  refrigerator  car  as  an  appur- 
tenance of  the  packing  industry.  Actually,  by  recent 
figures,  there  are  several  times  as  many  refrigerator 
cars  carrying  fresh  fruit,  vegetables,  and  the  like,  as 
there  are  owned  by  packers  and  used  principally  for 
meat  products.  While  G.  F.  Swift  struggled  to  make 
progress  to  forward  his  ideas  of  shipping  beef,  a 
real  effort  was  being  made  in  many  quarters  to  pro- 
duce a  satisfactory  refrigerator  car.  Some  had 
already  been  built  which  came  pretty  close  to  doing 
what  they  were  supposed  to. 


188  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

Father  rented  such  of  these  as  he  could  get.  In 
them  he  shipped  beef  east  to  his  own  wholesale  mar- 
ket at  Clinton,  Massachusetts,  and  to  Anthony,  Swift 
&  Company  at  Fall  River.  Ke  even  managed  to  get 
a  couple  of  distributors  and  to  keep  them  supplied 
with  Chicago-dressed  beef.  The  first  two  customers 
to  push  his  product  in  the  East — outside  of  the  two 
firms  which  he  owned  or  had  an  interest  in — were 
Francis  Jewett,  of  Lowell,  and  I.  M.  Lincoln,  of 
Providence. 

When  the  railroads  refused  to  build  refrigerator 
cars  for  him  to  ship  in,  he  approached  the  Michigan 
Car  Company,  of  Detroit.  The  McMillen  family 
owned  this  concern.  They  were  rich  and  had  a  lean- 
ing toward  an  undertaking  which  might  make  them 
a  profitable  future  market  if  they  took  a  little  chance 
in  the  present. 

Reduced  to  its  barest  terms,  G.  F.  Swift's  pro- 
posal to  the  owners  was  that  they  build  him  some 
refrigerator  cars  and  let  him  pay  for  them  out  of 
their  earnings.  They  took  a  chance  with  him,  even 
though  they  did  not  know  that  the  cars  would  earn. 
To  be  sure,  they  retained  a  hold  on  them — some- 
thing on  the  order  of  a  mortgage  which  was,  I  think, 
the  forerunner  of  the  modern  equipment  trust.  But 
the  cars  would  be  worth  little  to  anyone  unless  they 
could  yield  a  profit.  And  if  G.  F.  Swift  could  not 
make  them  pay,  then  the  Michigan  Car  Company 
stood  a  slender  chance  of  ever  being  paid  for  them. 

He  paid  fifteen  per  cent  down,  as  I  recall  the 


FIGHT  WHEN  YOU  MUST  189 

transaction,  with  the  remainder  to  be  paid  monthly 
out  of  earnings.  It  was  a  remarkable  deal  for  those 
days.  Car  builders  were  used  to  getting  cash  for 
their  products.  The  railroads  had  not  yet  been 
reduced  to  the  intricate  ways  of  financing  which 
have  become  general  as  operating  costs  have  risen. 

Patents  had  offered  a  real  obstacle,  too.  The  pat- 
ent situation  on  refrigerator  cars  was  a  maze.  Ham- 
mond had  certain  patents  which  made  his  refriger- 
ator cars  satisfactory.  There  was  a  Tiffany  patent, 
a  Zimmerman  patent.  There  was  the  Anderson  car, 
the  Wickes  car.  Not  one  of  them  was  absolutely 
right  for  the  purpose;  all  of  them  had  some  good 
features. 

So  father  made  what  arrangements  he  could  with 
the  patentees  and  designed  a  car  which  seemed  to 
incorporate  the  best  features  of  them  all.  This  was 
the  design  by  which  his  first  ten  cars  were  being 
built  in  Detroit.  Once  he  could  have  the  cars  roll- 
ing, he  felt  sure  he  would  begin  making  money  fast. 
The  cars  were  completed  and  success  seemed  just 
around  the  corner. 

But  before  they  could  be  moved  and  put  to  work, 
Hammond  brought  injunction  proceedings.  He 
claimed  an  infringement  and  he  tied  up  in  the  build- 
er's yards  all  ten  of  those  urgently  needed  cars. 

Here  they  remained  for  several  months.  Legal 
procedure  is  always  too  slow  to  help  much  in  a  situ- 
ation of  this  sort.  No  matter  how  father  might  fight 
it  in  the  courts,  at  best  it  would  take  months  or  years 


190  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

before  he  could  hope  to  have  his  cars  released  for 
his  use. 

Once  more  he  resorted  to  tact.  It  was  a  blue  time 
for  him.  But  he  managed  to  convince  another 
wealthy  man  of  the  possibilities  in  those  cars.  This 
man  lent  him  the  money  to  put  up  as  a  bond  with 
the  court  to  guarantee  Hammond  against  any  dam- 
ages the  cars  might  do  him.  By  hustling  around, 
father  soon  had  the  ten  cars  hauling  beef  east  for  him. 
Eventually  his  claims  were  upheld.  The  courts  ruled, 
"No  infringement." 

But  even  after  it  was  working,  almost  nobody  had 
much  confidence  in  his  plan  of  slaughtering  cattle  in 
Chicago  and  selling  the  meat  in  the  East.  "Stave's 
Wild  West  scheme"  it  came  to  be  known  among  the 
Cape  Cod  relatives. 

Within  two  years  the  Yankee  had  over  a  hundred 
cars  running  from  the  Yards  to  the  East.  They  were 
all  making  money.  Still  no  one  took  him  seriously. 
Others  before  him  had  tried  shipping  beef  east  and 
had  failed.  Everyone  prophesied  that  it  would  break 
him.  He  kept  on,  getting  a  tremendous  head  start 
while  the  others  waited  for  him  to  fail.  By  1880  the 
refrigerator  car,  and  with  it  G.  F.  Swift's  method 
of  dressing  beef  in  Chicago,  was  indisputably  a  suc- 
cess. 

Once  he  got  the  refrigerator  cars  running,  his  diffi- 
culties were  still  on  the  increase.  His  technical  trou- 
bles with  the  cars  and  with  getting  the  meat  chilled 
properly  before  hanging  it  in  the  cars  very  nearly 


FIGHT  WHEN  YOU  MUST  191 

broke  him.  Ruin  was  so  close  several  times,  in  fact, 
that  good  active  hustling  was  all  that  saved  him. 

Aside  from  these  troubles,  he  had  to  develop  all 
kinds  of  auxiliary  equipment  for  his  refrigerator  cars 
and  his  beef  coolers.  He  had  to  buy  ice-harvesting 
rights  in  lakes  all  over  northern  Illinois  and 
southern  Wisconsin  so  that  he  might  have  the  ice 
for  cooling  his  beef  and  loading  the  ice  boxes  of  his 
cars  at  Chicago.  He  had  to  develop  icing  stations 
all  the  way  across  the  country  to  his  markets  in  the 
East — the  railroads  would  not  build  them.  Then 
he  had  to  get  the  ice-harvesting  facilities  to  supply 
these  stations.  He  had  to  build  ice  houses  of  huge 
capacity.  His  ice-consuming  capacity  was  by  the 
wave  of  a  hand  and  the  development  of  an  idea 
greater  than  any  other  ice  user's  in  the  country. 

These  stations  have,  for  the  most  part,  long  since 
gone  out  of  our  hands.  The  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission  ruled  on  complaint  of  other  packers  that 
we  could  no  longer  hold  icing  stations,  since  our  icing 
stations  gave  us  a  small  profit  on  all  competitors' 
shipments.  So  the  stations  were  sold  to  the  railroads, 
which  by  then  were  glad  to  take  them  over.  And 
refrigeration  by  mechanical  means  had  displaced  ice 
to  such  an  extent  that  only  a  small  percentage  of  all 
of  our  refrigeration  requirements  were  supplied  by 
natural  ice. 

But  the  means  by  which  father  built  them,  financed 
them,  and  maintained  them — all  of  this  is  with  us  as 
vitally  as  it  was  then.    For  it  comprised  the  principal 


192  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

essentials  of  building  a  business  under  great  handi- 
caps of  inadequate  capital.  He  built  under  those 
circumstances.  What  is  more,  he  built  both  fast  and 
sound. 


CHAPTER  XI 


NEVER  STAY  BEATEN 

NEVER  admit  it  even  when  somebody's  beat 
you." 

My  father  draped  his  angular  person  over  my  old- 
fashioned  roll-top  desk  and  gratuitously  offered  me 
this  bit  of  friendly  advice  a  hundred  times,  I  sup- 
pose, during  the  '80s  and  '90s.  To  be  sure,  he  vented 
a  Jovian  wrath  more  times  than  that  when  he  had 
me  beaten  on  some  point  and  I  would  not  admit  it. 
But  he  seldom  intended  his  generalizations  of  con- 
duct to  apply  to  his  managers  and  his  sons  in  their 
relations  with  him! 

Had  he  been  more  the  philosopher  and  less  the 
man  of  action,  father  would  have  stated  his  advice  a 
little  differently.  As  he  exemplified  his  maxim  in 
daily  life,  in  his  idiom  it  should  have  been:  "Never 
admit  it  even  to  yourself  when  somebody's  beat  you." 
He  never  admitted  it,  even  to  himself. 

"Let's  talk  about  something  else,"  he  would  direct 
on  those  rare  occasions  when  a  manager  or  one  of  the 
boys  cornered  him  and  penned  him  in  with  heaped- 
up  facts.  Translated,  this  meant,  "Go  ahead,  do  it 
your  way.    But  I  won't  admit  you  have  me  beaten!" 

He  was  never  small  about  it.  He  did  not  reserve 
this  attitude  for  his  subordinates  or  for  the  moments 

193 


i94  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

when,  perhaps,  a  superintendent  proved  conclusively 
that  his  pet  way  of  splitting  a  hog  was  far  ahead  of 
the  plan  his  chief  was  sponsoring.  What  was  true  in 
the  minutiae  of  his  daily  work  was  quite  as  notice- 
able in  his  moments  of  great  crisis. 

He  would  never  admit  a  defeat,  even  to  himself. 
He  never  knew  when  he  was  licked.  If  he  had  recog- 
nized a  number  of  different  occasions  when  he  was 
genuinely  worsted,  his  history  must  inevitably  have 
been  different. 

Several  times  his  business  was  in  such  shape  that  I 
cannot  yet  quite  understand  how  he  managed  to  pull 
it  through.  Certainly  he  would  have  lost  it  if  ever 
he  had  recognized  its  hopeless  state.  In  the  early 
years  at  Chicago  he  was  frequently  so  deeply  involved 
that  one  marvels  he  came  through  at  all. 

A  man  who  was  associated  with  Gustavus  Franklin 
Swift  for  many  years,  at  first  back  in  Brighton  and 
later  in  Chicago,  always  declared  that  his  friend  and 
employer  progressed  as  he  did  through  two  closely 
related  reasons:  "He  had  abiding  faith  in  his  ulti- 
mate success.    He  was  afraid  of  nothing." 

These  are  the  only  explanations  I  can  offer  for  sev- 
eral extraordinary  phenomena  which  acquaintance- 
ship with  his  career  brings  to  mind.  How  was  he 
able  to  take  hold  of  the  refrigerator  car — something 
which  others  had  tried,  which  some  in  fact  had  used 
— and  make  it  in  his  hands  a  tool  a  thousand  times 
more  potent  than  ever  it  had  seemed?  How  did  he 
manage,  in  a  field  where  others  were  large  and  pow- 


NEVER  STAY  BEATEN  195 

erful,  to  grow  from  insignificance  at  a  speed  which 
even  in  this  day  of  larger  affairs  seems  dizzy,  to 
overcome  obstacles  which  from  this  perspective  seem 
to  have  been  insurmountable,  and  to  become  even- 
tually the  leader  in  his  new  industry? 

His  faith,  his  lack  of  fear,  these  made  possible  what 
he  accomplished.  He  simply  could  not  dignify  dis- 
couraging circumstances  by  letting  them  discourage 
him.  He  went  his  way  serenely  ignoring  what  by 
all  calculations  should  have  disheartened  him. 

Had  he  recognized  facts  which  were  as  plain  as  the 
nose  on  his  face  he  would  have  quit  and  lost  his  busi- 
ness in  '93.  He  would  never  have  got  past  the  dis- 
couraging times  of  the  late  '70s  when  daily  he  staked 
more  than  he  could  afford  to  lose.  He  staked  it  on 
the  performance  of  faulty  refrigerator  cars  which 
perversely  failed  to  keep  their  perishable  contents 
cold.  He  staked  it  on  imperfect  beef  coolers  which 
took  the  most  inopportune  occasions  to  obstinately 
refuse  to  chill  the  natural  heat  out  of  the  fresh-killed 
carcasses  in  time  for  them  to  be  shipped. 

He  was  playing  for  big  stakes,  playing  long  shots 
to  win.  The  odds  against  him  were  his  faulty  coolers 
and  faulty  cars.  When  he  won,  when  a  shipment  got 
through  in  good  shape,  he  made  a  good  profit.  When 
he  lost,  when  a  car  of  beef  arrived  good  only  for 
dumping  into  the  bay  at  Fall  River,  then  the  loss 
should  have  staggered  him. 

But  it  did  not.  Such  a  loss  failed  to  disturb  him. 
"It  will  be  all  right,"  he  would  assure  the  rest  of  us 


196  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

as  we  discussed  our  bad  luck  in  the  depths  of  our 
discouragement.  Then  with  all  good  cheer  he  would 
promptly  entrust  another  half-dozen  loads  of  the 
precious  beef  to  his  fallible  cars.  Probably  this 
would  get  through  in  good  shape  and  so  would  the 
next  shipment.  Then,  just  as  he  was  getting  in  the 
clear  with  his  profits  on  successful  shipments,  some- 
thing would  go  wrong  again. 

It  took  only  two  or  three  cars  of  soured  beef  to 
wipe  out  his  gains  on  a  good  many  cars  that  arrived 
sweet  and  salable.  Two  successive  losses  of  good 
size  frequently  put  him  in  the  red  for  an  amount 
beyond  the  limits  of  any  other  man's  credit.  Some- 
how, though,  he  would  keep  his  courage  up,  refuse 
to  admit  he  was  in  a  corner,  get  more  money  if  the 
case  was  that  desperate. 

"The  trouble  is,  we  don't  quite  know  how  to  do 
it  right,"  he  would  admit  with  not  a  trace  of  dis- 
couragement. "We'll  get  it,  though.  We'll  learn." 
Then  he  would  set  about  experimenting  some  more, 
watching  even  more  carefully  than  before  to  make 
sure  that  he  overlooked  no  known  precaution. 

Many  a  hot  July  and  August  night  he  got  on  a 
horse  and  rode  over  to  the  packing  house  at  mid- 
night or  later.  He  would  go  straight  to  the  coolers 
and  eye  the  thermometers.  Then  he  would  be  after 
the  foreman.  "You've  got  to  get  those  men  to  shovel- 
ing more  ice  and  more  salt,"  he  would  direct.  "Let's 
see  the  temperature  come  down  five  degrees."  And 
though  it  meant  vigil  to  the  moment  of  going  to  his 


vmmm 


THE  ORIGINAL  WINDLASS    USED  BY  G.   F.   SWIFT 
FOR  HOISTING  STEER  AFTER  KILLING — 
BARNSTABLE,   l86l- 


THE  ORIGINAL  BULL-RING  USED 
BY  G.  F.  SWIFT  FOR  PULLING 
ANIMAL  DOWN   FOR  SLAUGHTER. 


NEVER  STAY  BEATEN  197 

desk  for  the  morning  mail,  father  would  walk  among 
the  men  urging  them  to  greater  efforts  until  the  tell- 
tale mercury  column  dropped  to  a  reassuring  depth. 

Inventors  busied  themselves  those  days  with  coolers 
and  refrigerator  cars.  Orchardmen  beyond  the  Sier- 
ras clamored  for  something  on  wheels  that  would 
roll  into  Hoboken  yards  with  its  fragile  freight  all 
toothsome.  Swift,  the  Yankee  of  the  Yards,  chafed 
for  the  chance  to  try  any  device  which  might  serve 
surely  to  haul  his  Chicago  beef  sweet  and  edible  to 
New  England  and  New  York.  The  world's  mechan- 
ically minded  worked  to  perfect  the  means. 

But  they  seemed  to  crawl.  Progress  must  be  faster 
if  this  pioneer  was  to  build  an  industry  and  control 
the  large  share  of  it  his  heart  was  set  on.  So  besides 
having  a  look  at  any  device  brought  to  him,  he  like- 
wise experimented  on  improvements  to  find  what  he 
must  have. 

Before  he  came  to  Chicago,  he  had  at  Fall  River 
installed  a  refrigerator  built  by  the  Chase  patent — 
then  rebuilt  it  to  make  it  work.  At  Chicago  he  built 
Chase  refrigerators  and  Zimmerman  refrigerators — 
and  rebuilt  them.  He  and  his  superintendent  worked 
continually  at  improving  these  carcass  chillers.  They 
would  build  a  model  incorporating  some  hopeful  idea 
for  circulating  air  through  every  part  of  the  com- 
partment, the  basic  problem  of  refrigeration.  Then 
they  would  send  smoke  through  the  chambers,  so  that 
their  eyes  might  trace  the  currents. 

Painfully,  step  by  step  they  wprked  out  the  funda- 


198  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

mental  laws  of  refrigeration  which  are  generally- 
known  today.  They  were  not  scientists  looking  for 
principles.  They  were  practical  packing-house  men 
in  search  of  ways  to  chill  beef  carcasses  properly. 
Today  we  know  that  they  discovered  the  principles 
and  might  well  have  written  monographs  and  text- 
books on  refrigeration  had  they  been  so  inclined. 

All  the  while  they  were  working  with  cars,  too. 
Father  tried  out  first,  as  I  recall  it,  the  Wickes  car 
and  the  Anderson  car.  Anderson  relied  on  the  nat- 
ural circulation  of  air  through  the  ice  chambers  and 
the  beef  chamber — but  the  car  was  so  built  that  this 
circulation  took  place  only  imperfectly.  Wickes  em- 
ployed in  his  cars  a  contraption  which  hitched  a  fan 
to  the  car  axle,  thus  blowing  the  cold  air  through  the 
car. 

It  was  an  excellent  device,  barring  a  few  flaws. 
When  the  car  stopped  moving,  if  it  went  on  a  siding 
or  if  the  locomotive  broke  down  or  if  a  wreck  stopped 
the  train,  then  circulation  stopped  with  it  and  con- 
sequently so  did  the  refrigeration.  Likewise  if  the 
belt  broke  or  loosened.  We  lost  a  good  deal  of  meat 
first  and  last  in  Wickes  cars  which  were  delayed.  If 
the  train  kept  moving,  then  the  meat  arrived  in  per- 
fect condition — always  assuming  that  the  fan  kept 
blowing! 

Because  the  laws  of  refrigeration  were  not  under- 
stood, we  had  difficulty  in  chilling  carcass  meats  in 
quantity  at  the  packing  house.  When  we  killed  per- 
haps thirty  or  forty  cattle  a  day,  chilling  was  easy. 


NEVER  STAY  BEATEN  199 

But  as  the  day's  slaughter  mounted  into  the  hundreds, 
the  carcasses  contained  in  the  aggregate  a  great  deal 
of  heat  when  they  came  into  the  cold  rooms.  It  was 
like  bringing  in  so  many  loads  of  hot  bricks.  They 
raised  the  temperature  effectively  and  frequently  held 
it  high  through  the  night  until  the  next  day's  fresh 
kill  came  in  to  reinforce  them.  If  this  kept  up  for 
two  or  three  days,  perhaps  every  carcass  in  the  cooler 
was  still  warm  to  the  touch. 

When  this  happened  and  the  warm  meats  went 
into  the  cars,  they  might  be  chilled  in  transit.  But 
if  a  car  happened  to  be  one  of  the  faulty  ones,  then 
its  load  was  likely  to  sour  long  before  it  got  to  market. 

In  the  late  summer  of  '77  father  got  hold  of  the 
Zimmerman  car,  a  great  improvement  over  the  oth- 
ers. But  when  he  tried  the  same  principle  in  a 
carcass  chiller,  it  failed  utterly. 

Not  until  the  summer  of  '79  did  he  get  the  proper 
design  for  his  beef  coolers.  He  had  nothing  but  grief 
until  then,  when  he  got  in  an  improved  Chase  patent 
refrigerator  and  added  to  it  his  own  refinements  for 
air  circulation.  Once  this  was  working,  he  built  on 
the  same  design  several  chillers  of  about  one  hun- 
dred-carcass capacity  each.  He  insisted  that  beef 
must  hang  here  between  two  and  three  days  as  a 
minimum. 

Thus  his  Zimmerman  car  and  his  Chase  cooler 
put  him  in  what  was  by  contrast  with  his  previous 
experience  extremely  good  shape.  They  left  him 
free  to  work  on  other  major  problems.     It  was  sev- 


200  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

eral  years  later  that  he  discovered  the  Chase  princi- 
ple produced  a  better  car,  too. 

But  even  when  he  had  the  Chase  cooler  and  the 
Zimmerman  car,  the  worst  of  his  early  troubles  were 
over.  He  made  money  very  fast.  He  could  undersell 
the  local  slaughterers  of  the  East  and  still  make  more 
profit  per  dollar  of  sales.  He  enjoyed  a  fixed  differ- 
ential in  his  favor,  the  saving  he  made  by  paying 
freight  on  only  the  edible  portions  of  the  beef  animal. 

The  technical  difficulty  of  getting  chillers  and  cars 
to  do  what  they  were  supposed  to  was  only  part  of 
his  troubles  as  a  pioneer.  Beef  spoiled  in  transit  or 
in  the  underchilled  coolers.  It  cost  him  lots  of  money, 
too,  when  lots  of  money  was  exactly  what  he  lacked — 
still  this  was  only  a  beginning  to  his  woes. 

G.  F.  Swift's  total  wealth  at  the  time  he  settled 
his  partnership  with  J.  A.  Hathaway  was  around 
thirty  thousand  dollars.  He  had  made  little  during 
the  early  years,  for  what  he  made  on  successful  ship- 
ments he  lost  on  the  failures.  And  he  poured  good 
money  after  bad  on  experiments  with  coolers  and 
cars — experiments  which  advanced  his  knowledge  of 
refrigeration  and  so  in  the  long  run  amply  repaid 
their  cost.  But  at  the  time  they  looked  like  dead  loss. 
Dead  loss  was  the  one  thing  he  could  not  afford. 

Meanwhile  he  was  having  to  put  money  and  still 
more  money  in  auxiliary  equipment  to  further  his 
refrigeration.  Mechanical  refrigeration  was  not  in 
use  then — at  least  not  in  packing  houses.  Our  first 
mechanical  refrigeration  unit  was  built  in  our  first 


NEVER  STAY  BEATEN  201 

pork-packing  plant  in  1887.  It  was  our  maiden  step 
from  our  bondage  to  natural  ice. 

He  had  become  by  his  adoption  of  the  principle  of 
slaughtering  in  one  place  and  selling  the  meat  a  thou- 
sand miles  away  the  country's  largest  user  of  ice.  To 
supply  ice  in  the  quantities  he  needed  and  at  the 
places  he  needed  it,  he  provided  the  extensive  facili- 
ties already  mentioned. 

Financing  all  this  extension  was  a  real  burden.  It 
came  when  money  was  most  urgently  needed  in  other 
divisions  of  the  business — and  before  investors  were 
eager  to  put  in  their  money. 

When  father  needed  money  in  these  days  he  usu- 
ally went  out  and  hustled  for  it.  His  presence 
inspired  confidence.  People  usually  believed  in  him 
from  the  first  meeting.  So,  with  his  wide  acquaint- 
ance in  New  England's  beef  and  live-stock  trades,  he 
managed  selling  shares  or  borrowing  money  rather 
easily. 

When  everything  else  failed,  he  would  go  to  D. 
M.  Anthony  and  to  John  Sawyer  in  Boston.  He 
always  managed  to  get  money  from  them.  A  good 
many  times  during  those  blue  times  of  '77  and  '78 
their  funds,  wheedled  from  them  by  his  persuasive 
enthusiasm,  were  all  that  saved  him.  But  if  he  had 
ever  let  himself  see  there  was  doubt  of  his  pulling 
through,  he  must  many  times  have  given  in  to  the 
overwhelming  odds. 

His  capital  was  habitually  depleted.  Frozen  assets 
of  one  sort  and  another  were  almost  the  rule  at  first. 


202  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

And  while  in  a  brisk  market  his  business  could  have 
been  sold  on  the  auction  block  to  yield  enough  for 
the  creditors  and  leave  a  little  something  over  for 
the  owners,  still  he  met  the  technical  definition  of 
insolvency.  He  could  not  have  met  his  obligations 
at  the  time  they  fell  due. 

Somehow,  though,  he  would  fight  through  the  trou- 
bles. He  would  not  admit,  even  to  himself,  that  he 
was  beaten.  So  he  was  not  beaten.  He  would  go  to 
a  creditor  for  an  extension,  or  to  a  banker  with 
another  note  to  replace  the  one  which  would  soon 
fall  due — and  he  would  get  what  he  went  after. 

These  were  growing  pains,  these  financial  trou- 
bles. The  last  of  them  and  the  most  serious  were  the 
troubles  of  '93.  He  had  got  through  one  crisis  after 
another  by  increasing  the  company's  stock.  The 
assets  had  grown  considerably  faster  than  the  capi- 
tal; book  value  was  always  considerably  above  par 
value.  So  he  got  more  money  into  the  business  by 
issuing  more  stock  when  he  needed  it. 

The  business  was  coming  to  the  place  where  it 
would  need  a  lot  more  money  to  take  care  of  its  rapid 
expansion.  Father  saw  this  in  '92.  He  also  sus- 
pected the  approach  of  the  financial  panic  which 
appeared  by  May  of  '93.  He  did  not,  however, 
expect  it  so  soon. 

An  unusually  large  cash  dividend  was  declared  at 
the  end  of  1892 — something  like  twenty-four  per  cent, 
as  I  recall  it.  And,  on  the  heels  of  this,  the  stock- 
holders authorized  a  large  increase  of  the  capital 


NEVER  STAY  BEATEN  203 

stock.  This  issue  was  offered  to  the  stockholders 
very  soon  after. 

But  it  did  not  sell  well  at  all.  There  had,  of 
course,  been  in  the  directors'  minds  the  idea  that  the 
big  dividend  would  make  the  stock  sell  out  in  a  hurry. 
But  the  stockholders  were  already  feeling  the  pinch 
of  the  money  tightness  which  was  to  clamp  them 
three  months  later  in  the  great  panic.  Thankfully 
they  accepted  the  cash  dividend  and  thankfully  they 
used  it  to  help  themselves  out  of  their  other  finan- 
cial difficulties!  As  to  the  new  stock  issue,  it  would 
be  a  nice  thing  to  buy,  they  figured.  But  when  you 
haven't  the  money,  you  can't  buy.  So  they  didn't 
buy. 

This  is  really  why  the  panic  of  '93  hit  Swift  & 
Company  hard.  The  treasury  was  bare  of  ready 
cash — and  the  proceeds  of  the  stock  issue  which  had 
been  expected  to  yield  plenty  to  carry  through  the 
slump  failed  to  materialize.  It  was  perhaps  six 
months  before  the  stock  issue  sold  clean.  By  then  the 
business  was  out  of  the  woods.  Father,  aided  by 
L.  A.  Carton,  had  managed  to  finance  the  business  on 
its  own  assets.  For  half  a  year  the  business  had  been 
living,  like  the  traditional  desert  camel,  on  its  hump. 

Details  of  that  fight  have  been  told  in  a  preceding 
chapter.  It  was  a  magnificent  struggle,  the  more 
remarkable  that  it  was  successful.  If  the  head  of 
the  business  had  been  willing  to  face  the  situation 
with  a  real  recognition  of  how  desperate  it  was,  I 
do  not  believe  he  could  have  pulled  it  through.    He 


204  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

would  not  admit  even  to  himself  that  he  was  beaten. 
He  laughed  at  the  facts,  though  he  relaxed  mean- 
while not  an  ounce  of  his  effort  to  overcome  them. 

His  attitude  toward  the  whole  affair  came  up  one 
day  in  a  conversation  with  his  head  butcher.  The 
butcher  was  getting  fifteen  dollars  a  week — he  wanted 
a  raise.  That  a  panic  was  raging  meant  nothing  to 
him.  The  demand  might  have  exasperated  anyone 
at  such  a  time.  Strangely  enough  it  did  not  annoy 
his  chief. 

"I'll  tell  you  what  I'll  do,"  the  boss  countered  to 
the  astounded  packing-house  man.  "I'll  trade  you 
my  profits  this  week  for  your  wages."  On  that  jocu- 
lar basis,  the  employee  soon  found  himself  good- 
naturedly  agreeing  that  he  didn't  want  a  raise! 

With  the  autumn  of  '93,  Swift  &  Company  was 
done  with  growing  pains.  Then  it  was  that  the 
business  reached  maturity.  Within  a  year  or  two  the 
continual  shortage  of  ready  money  was  over.  Now 
its  head  could  take  his  ease,  with  the  business  grown 
to  a  size  greater  than  any  other  industrial  concern 
in  the  country  and  with  money  plentiful. 

It  was  the  first  time.  From  the  very  start,  when 
he  came  to  the  Chicago  Yards  as  a  Yankee  cattle 
buyer,  G.  F.  Swift  had  been  cramped  for  cash.  When 
he  started  out  in  the  dressed-beef  business,  then  he 
was  indeed  of  small  financial  importance  beside 
Armour  and  Morris. 

Armour  &  Company  in  1875  handled  no  beef,  no 
mutton.     They  were  pork  packers  only.     In  cool 


NEVER  STAY  BEATEN  205 

weather  they  slaughtered,  pickled,  cured,  and  smoked 
pork  products.  These  they  shipped  all  over  the 
world.  When  warm  weather  came  once  more  they 
shut  down  their  packing  houses. 

This,  by  the  way,  was  true  packing.  The  modern 
packer  devotes  only  a  part  of  his  effort  to  packing. 
Packing  involves  preserving  meats  so  that  they  will 
not  spoil,  at  least  not  spoil  easily.  Hams,  bacon, 
corned  beef,  smoked  tongue,  smoked  sausage,  salt 
pork,  these  are  packed  products.  The  dressed  meat 
business  is  in  no  sense  packing,  though  the  word  has 
come  to  include  a  great  many  nonpacking  activities. 
G.  F.  Swift  was  in  the  dressed-meat  business  from 
1876,  but  except  in  a  very  incidental  way  he  was  not 
a  packer  until  1887. 

Morris  &  Company  did  no  packing  in  1875.  It 
dealt  only  in  fresh  beef,  as  locally  around  Chicago  as 
did  Anthony,  Swift  &  Company  around  Fall  River. 
For  beef  could  not  be  shipped  dressed,  a  minor  quan- 
tity always  excepted  which  was  salted  and  pickled 
principally  for  export. 

P.  D.  Armour  and  Nelson  Morris  were  rich  men 
and  older  men  than  G.  F.  Swift.  By  the  time  they 
realized  he  was  not  going  to  fail,  he  had  such  a  head 
start  that  they  never  overtook  him. 

From  the  time  he  had  his  refrigerator  car  lines 
going,  he  was  the  largest  slaughterer  of  beef.  He 
soon  added  mutton  and  was  almost  immediately  at 
the  top  on  this  score.  When  pork  was  added,  in  1887, 
he  began  dealing  in  huge  quantities  of  fresh  dressed 


206  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

pork — though  it  was  a  good  many  years  before  the 
pork  products  business,  the  hams  and  bacons,  and 
the  like,  overtook  that  of  his  established  competitors. 

But  even  when  the  business  was  going  well,  he 
had  his  periodical  troubles.  One  of  these  was  the 
oleo  oil  patent  suit.  Father  thought  he  had  the  rights 
to  make  oleo  oil.  A  patent-holder  thought  that  he 
had  not.  So  the  patent-holder  brought  suit  for 
infringement. 

The  head  of  our  company  was  put  in  the  situation 
where  he  had  to  get  that  whole  set  of  patents 
adjudged  open  to  the  world,  else  his  business  would 
have  been  liable  for  so  much  money  that  it  could 
not  have  survived.  This  patent  suit  made  little  im- 
pression outside  the  packing  industry.  But  every 
packer  knew  it  was  a  fight  to  the  death.  By  the  time 
the  decisions  had  been  appealed  and  reappealed  and 
a  final  unreversible  decision  handed  down,  anyone 
was  at  liberty  to  make  oleo  oil  by  any  process  he 
cared  to  use.  Once  more  his  refusal  to  admit  he  was 
beaten  had  won  the  day.  For  at  the  outset,  if  ever  a 
lawsuit  looked  hopeless  this  one  did. 

Another  set  of  troubles — minor  perhaps  but  none 
the  less  obstinate — were  those  with  the  British  dis- 
tributors already  referred  to.  They  were  willing  to 
handle  American  beef.  But  because  it  was  not  native 
to  the  British  Isles,  their  sound  British  instincts  told 
them  it  must  be  inferior. 

So  they  cut  the  meat  differently  from  the  standard 
way.     This  made  it  look  inferior.    Actually  it  was 


NEVER  STAY  BEATEN  207 

up  to  the  standard  of  the  best  British  beef  ever  pro- 
duced anywhere.  Ours  was  fine,  clean  meat.  It  did 
not  take  a  cynic  to  have  his  reasonable  doubts  about 
the  cleanliness  of  a  good  deal  of  the  British  beef. 

Father  was  forever  turning  up  at  Smithfield  mar- 
ket in  the  gray  London  dawn  with  his  cheery  insist- 
ence on  having  his  beef  cut  properly.  Although  Brit- 
ish conservatism  seemed  a  hopeless  obstacle,  in  time 
he  wore  it  down — for  he  could  not  see  the  obstacle  as 
hopeless. 

He  went  at  it  cheerfully,  won  his  point  as  he 
always  did,  and  soon  his  beef  was  in  demand  as  the 
finest  obtainable.  Before  long  he  had  to  open  branch 
houses  all  over  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  to  accom- 
modate the  trade. 

He  encountered  a  comparable  task  when  he  went 
at  the  job  of  feeding  Chicago-dressed  beef  to  the  hide- 
bound, rockbound  conservatives  of  New  England 
and  New  York.  Eat  meat  dressed  a  thousand  miles 
away?  No  Yankee  had  ever  been  served  a  steak 
which  originated  more  than  a  few  miles  from  the 
stove  that  cooked  it,  no  sir,  not  if  he  knew  it!  To 
people  accustomed  to  having  a  slaughterhouse  just 
outside  the  limits  of  every  town,  the  very  idea  of 
Chicago-dressed  beef  was  repugnant.  The  meat  was 
actually  fresher  in  condition  if  not  in  time.  It  had 
been  produced  in  cleanliness  instead  of  in  a  filthy 
small-town  shambles.  The  cattle  were  in  better  con- 
dition when  slaughtered.  But  all  this  made  little 
difference.    Prejudice  is  founded  on  feelings,  not  on 


208  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

knowledge.  When  one  puts  his  mind  to  work  on  a 
question,  then  prejudice  cannot  remain. 

Father  would  not  admit  that  a  prejudice  could 
stop  him.  He  wore  down  that  Yankee  prejudice — 
mind  you,  he  was  doing  this  in  the  self-same  weeks 
when  he  was  watching  his  smoke  currents  eddy 
through  embryonic  chillers  and  refrigerator  cars,  on 
the  day  before  or  the  day  after  he  was  buying  an 
ice  house  with  fifty  thousand  dollars  which  he  confi- 
dently expected  to  get  from  selling  stock  to  a  friend. 
He  was  doing  it  between  appointments  at  Brighton 
and  Boston  where  he  would  somehow  borrow  the 
money  to  make  up  his  losses  on  spoiled  shipments. 
How  any  man  could  carry  so  many  activities  and 
perform  them  all  so  well  has  never  been  answered 
to  my  satisfaction.  Yet  I  was  with  him  several  hours 
a  day  while  he  kept  the  equivalent  of  a  fish-bowl, 
a  cannon  ball,  and  a  live  rabbit  in  mid  air.  It  was 
uncanny. 

His  wide  acquaintance  in  the  live-stock  and  meat 
trade  of  the  East  served  him  in  getting  distribution, 
just  as  it  served  him  in  getting  money.  In  fact,  the 
two  often  went  hand  in  hand.  He  would  sign  up  a 
wholesale  dealer  to  carry  our  dressed  beef;  then 
before  he  got  through  he  would  sell  that  dealer  a 
small  block  of  Swift  stock.  He  got  not  only  an  outlet, 
but  along  with  it  the  sincere  loyalty  of  a  partner- 
And  he  got  the  money  he  was  needing  so  badly  all 
the  while.  In  the  course  of  a  few  years  he  and  his 
brother  Edwin  worked  out  several  hundreds  of  these 


NEVER  STAY  BEATEN  209 

partnership  arrangements,  usually  with  a  Swift  inter- 
est in  the  distributing  business  as  a  double  bond. 

After  the  panic  of  1893  had  passed  and  money  was 
easy  in  the  business,  an  idea  began  to  develop  tending 
toward  consolidation.  The  steel  consolidations  had 
just  been  completed.     Consolidation  was  in  the  air. 

So  father,  J.  O.  Armour,  and  Edward  Morris 
formed  the  National  Packing  Company  in  1902.  It 
was  capitalized  at  fifteen  million  dollars.  Its  com- 
ponents were  a  group  of  "small  packers,"  the  term 
which  includes  all  but  the  handful  of  very  large 
companies.  The  plan  w^s  to  continue  with  the 
merger,  taking  in  the  smaller  of  the  large  packers. 
Then,  when  all  of  these  were  welded  into  one  unit, 
the  National  Packing  Company  would  absorb  the 
"Big  Three,"  Swift,  Armour,  and  Morris.  It  was 
an  ambitious  plan. 

But  public  opinion  was  too  strong  against  it.  Per- 
haps if  father  had  lived,  it  might  have  gone  through 
— though  I  doubt  it.  He  died  early  in  1903.  As 
public  opinion  rose  against  the  enterprise,  the  terms 
on  which  the  bankers  would  finance  the  merger  rose 
at  the  same  pace.  Once  the  financing  charges  had 
begun  their  climb,  the  plan  died  of  its  own  weight. 
Eventually  by  court  order  the  National  Packing 
Company  was  dissolved,  and  the  smaller  companies 
which  composed  it  were  returned  to  their  previous 
owners. 

So  father's  last  great  business  dream  fell  through 
when  he  was  no  longer  here  to  know  it. 


210  THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 

Of  all  the  major  plans  he  had  ever  made,  this  alone 
he  failed  to  push  through  to  successful,  profitable 
completion. 

Can  there  be  a  more  forceful,  compact  way  of 
summing  up  G.  F.  Swift's  record? 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Albany,  N.  Y.  6,  8,  59, 127 

Alterations  avoided  13 

Anderson  refrigerator  patents 

and  cars  189,  198 

Anthony,  D.  M.  10,  78,  126, 

128,  179,  201 
Anthony,  Swift  &  Co.  10,  78, 

126,  176,178,  188,  205 
Armour  &  Co.  204-205,  209 

Armour,  J.  Ogden  209 

Armour,  Philip  D.  92,  204-205 

Assonet,  Mass.         107, 127, 176, 

178,  186 
Auditor,  Swift  as  99 


B 


Back-of -Yards  widows 
Bankruptcy,  rumors  of 


Barnstable,  Mass. 
Bateman 
Beacon  Hill 
Beardstown,  111. 
Beaten,  never  stay 
Beef  bags  and  tags 
Beef  coolers 
"Big  Three" 
Bigelow  carpets 
Blankets,  horse 
Blood 

Board  of  Trade 
Borrowing 

from  employees 
Bosses  kept  at  work 
Boston 
Bran  mash 


74, 


101 

35-36 

123-124 

16-17 

47 

138-139 

193 

101 

9,  57,  72,  195-200 

209 

50 

63 

11,  176 

36,37 

29 

32 

15 

6,  120,  122,  125,  155 

62,63 


Brighton,  Mass.         6,  59,  74,  90, 

122-124,  126-128,  180,  194 
British  market  63,  91,  206 

Bruise-trimming  47, 48 

Bubbly  Creek  3-5 

Buffalo,  N.Y.  6,8,127 

Buggy,  horse  and  83 

Bullock,  splitting  59 

Bureau  of  Animal  Industry  7 

By-products  utilization    4,  10-12,  131 


Cape  Cod  iv,  5,  7,  8,  11,  49, 

51-52,  74,  119-124,  190 
Capital 

stock  increased  27 

Swift's  first  25 

Carfare  for  boy  100 

Cars,  freight 
see  Freight 
Carton,  L.  A.  44,  154,  203 

Casings  10, 98 

Character,  we  want  168 

Chase  refrigerator  patents  and 

cars  197,  199-200 

Cheating  punished  97 

Chicago 

in  the  1870s  v,  6,  11,  127-128 

in  the  1880s  3 

in  the  I890S  3 

packers  11,37-38 

stockyards    v,  5,  25-26,  29,  153,  204 
plant  17,  56,  59,  i°4, 145-146 

Swift  comes  to  6,25,127,178 

Chicago  Board  of  Trade  36,  37 

Chicago  Junction  Railway  182 


213 


214 


THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 


Chicago  Union  Station 

11S 

Chicago  World's  Fair 

39-40 

Chilling  meat 

191, 198 

Chuck  beef 

57 

Church,  interest  in 

46,  62 

Claims  examined 

19,  160 

Clark  Street 

114 

Cleanliness 

47,54 

Cleveland,  President  Grove: 

c         183 

Cleveland,  Ohio            72-73 

,  139-140 

Clinton,  Mass.        49-52,  78, 

in, 

125-127: 

,  186,  188 

Coachman  steals 

170 

Compliments 

165 

Conference,  use  of 

107 

Coolers  kept  attractive 

57 

Cooling  beef 

191, 196 

Covering  wagons 

18 

Credit  maintained 

28 

Cross  examination 

i47, 174 

Crotch  fat 

56 

Crowell,  Grandfather 

121 

Crowell,  Paul 

121-122 

Cure  formula 

104 

Customers 

partnerships 

80-81 

stock  sold  to                     81 

, 173,  208 

Cutting  beef 

57 

Cut  to  sell 

75 

D 

Decisions 

129 

Defeat  not  admitted 

157, 193 

Detroit 

188-189 

Disciplinarian,  Swift  as 

163 

Dishonest  employees 

168, 170 

Displaying  meats 

50,  51,  75 

Donovan,  John 

166 

Doud,  Levi  B. 

42-43 

"Down  in  Mobile" 

164 

Drainage,  roof 

138 

"Dummy-train" 

84-85 

Duty  first 


Eastham,  Mass.  123 

East  St.  Louis  plant  16-17, 

47-48,  132,  151-152 
Ellis  Avenue  no 

Ellis,  E.W.  121 

Emerald  Avenue  no 


Failure  refuted 

36 

Fall  River,  Mass.       10, 

126-127, 

131,  178-179,  186, 

188,  195,  205 

Father  starts  Swift 

120 

Faults,  men's,  corrected 

144 

Feet,  beef 

10 

Filing 

86-87 

Financing 

27,  201 

Fink,  Albert 

184 

Fire  in  packing  house 

89 

Fitchburg,  Mass. 

70-71 

Fitzgerald,  Richard 

182 

Foremen  visit  Swift 

97,  no,  147 

Formula,  pork  cure 

104 

Fort  Sheridan,  111. 

183 

Foster,  A.  C. 

90 

Freight 

cars  rented 

188 

rates 

9,i83 

saving  in 

8,  24,  26,  128 

Frogs'  legs 

133 

Fruit  cars 

187 

G 

Glue 

38 

Goodspeed,  Thomas  W. 

121 

Grandfather  sells  hens 

119 

Grand  Pacific  Hotel 

114 

Grand  Trunk  Railroad  178, 

184-185, 187 
Great  Britain  63-64,  91,  206-207 

Great  Plains  6 


INDEX 


215 


H 


Halloway 

77 

Lancaster  ginghams 

5o-5i 

Hammond,  G.  H. 

186 

Lard 

161 

patent  suit  brought  by- 

189-190 

compound 

161 

Handling  men 

140 

refinery 

178 

Hathaway  &  Swift 

25,  78, 

Lawrence,  Mass. 

67 

117-118, 

126,  137,  179 

Leadership  secured 

130 

Hathaway,  James  A. 

25,  "7- 

Leavitt,  Calvin,  &  Son 

128 

118,  126,  128, 

179-180,  200 

Leavitt,  Wellington 

90,  128 

Heads,  beef 

10 

Lincoln,  I.  M. 

188 

Hearts,  beef 

10 

Liverpool 

154 

Hides 

7, 10,  38 

Livers,  beef 

10- 1 1 

Higgins,  Annie  Maria 

Live  Stock  Exchange 

(Mrs.  G.  F.  Swift) 

123 

Building 

113,  143 

Hoboken 

197 

Location  studied 

133 

Hogs                 5-7, 60-61, 

98, 122, 

London 

64,  91,  207 

163-164, 166 

Longhorns,  Texas 

6,  72,  131 

Honesty 

168 

Lowe  &  Sons 

70-71 

Horse 

Lowell,  Mass. 

67-68,  188 

and  buggy 

83 

blankets 

63 

M 

Horses 

see  Swift,  C.  F.,  horses 

Managers 

Ice,  ice-houses,  and  icing  33, 

138-141,  170-171,  191,  196,  200-201 


Incorporation 
Injunction,  car  patents 
Instructions  made  clear 
Interstate  Commerce  Act 
Interstate  Commerce 

Commission 
Inventory  reduced 
Ireland 

J 

Jewett,  Francis 
Judge  of  men,  Swift  as 

K 


27,  80 

189 

156 

9,  184-185 

191 
38 

207 

188 
158 


Kansas  City  plant    47-48,  54-55, 
99, 103-104, 114,  131-132,   148-149 


must  sell  65 

trained  21 

visit  Swift  97,  no,  147 

McKinley,  President  William  B.    86 
McMillen  family  188 

Meat  carts  51-52,121,174 

Meats 

fresh  7-9,  18,  49-52,  65-81 

shipment  of  8-9,  24,  130-131, 

183-192,  195,  205-208 
pickled  and  smoked        38,  103-106 
Mechanics  a  luxury  13 

Men 

handling  140 

training  140,  146,  159 

Michigan  Avenue  36 

Michigan  Car  Co.  188 

Michigan  Central  Railroad  182 

Midway  40 


2l6 


THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 


Milwaukee  92 

Mistakes  not  allowed  162 

Moore,  Billy  178,186 

Morris  &  Co.  38,  205,  209 

Morris,  Edward  209 

Morris,  Nelson  92,  204-205 

Mutton  131, 205 

N 

Napoleon  iv 

National  Livestock  Bank  42-43 

National  Packing  Co.  209-210 

Neat's  foot  oil  10 

Negroes,  whistling  stopped  163 

"Never  admit  you're  beat !"  193 
New  York  City                      66-67,  184 

"No  dead  lines"  112 

Notes  widely  held  43 

O 

Ogden,  Utah  80 

Oleomargarine  11 

Oleo  oil  19-20,  47-48,  206 

Omaha  62,  99-100,  104,  132 

Outside  men,  hiring  149 

Overcoat,  foreman  wears  54 


East  St.  Louis       16-17,47-48, 

132,  151-1S2 
Kansas  City  47"48,  54-55, 

99, 103-104,  114,  132,  148-149 
South  Omaha  62-63, 

99-100,  104,  132 
South  St.  Paul  104,  134-135 

St.  Joseph  14-15,  60, 104, 

132-134,  148-153,  166 
Pocket  note  book  incident  148 

Pony,  small  58 

Pope  126 

Poultry,  dealing  in  156 

Pork  131,  204-206 

cures  103-106 

Praise,  sparing  use  of  115,  165 

Pratt,  T.  L.  166,  167 

Prejudice  against  western 

beef  69,  206 

Premium  brand  106 

Providence,  R.  I.  50,  188 

Pullman 

company  181 

strike  181-183 


Q 

Questions,  Swift  asks 


97 


Packing,  true  205 

Paint  63 

Panic  of  1893       28-45,  87-88,  202-204 

Partnership  dissolved  179 

Partnerships  80 
Patents 

car  189 

litigation  settled  190 

oleo  206 

Personal  habits  of  employees  171 

Pig  buying  122 

Piper,  A.  S.  33-35 
Plant 

Chicago         17,  56,  59,  104,  145-146 


Raise  refused  142,  204 

Rank  and  file  159 

Rates,  freight  183 

Refrigeration  in  1869  50 

Refrigerator  cars  9,  27,  62, 

130-131,  185-192,  195-201,  205 

Reports,  use  of  102 

Ribs  57 

Rotterdam  47 

Runaway  horse  113 


Sal  soda 
Salaries,  small 


54 
112 


INDEX 


217 


Sandusky,  O.  140 

Sandwich,  Mass.  72 

San  Francisco  78-79,  156-157 

Sarcasm  used  53,  160,  173 

Sawyer,  John  201 

Scraping  hogs  60,  166 

Self-reliance  94 

Sell  hardest  first  72 

"Sets,"  beef  10-11 

Sewer  wastes  4,  20 

Shin-bones  11 

Shortages  65 

Singing  stopped  164 

Sioux  City,  la.  135-136 

Slaughterhouses,  local  7 

Smithfield  Market  64,  91,  207 

South  Boston  47 

Statement  to  banks  41 

"Stave's  Wild  West  scheme"  190 

Stealing  168,  170 

Steamship  dispute  95 

Stock 

capital  27-28 

first  issue  28 

issue  of  1892  203 

sold  27,  81,  172-173,  203,  208 

to  customers  81,  173,  208 

to  employees  172 

St.  Joseph  plant      14-15,  60,  104, 

132-134,  148-153,  166 
St.  Paul  plant  104,  134-135 

Strike 

of  1884  IIO-III 

Pullman  181-183 

Superintendents  visit  Swift  no 

Swift  &  Co. 

Chicago  plant  17,  56,  59, 

104,  145-146 
Cleveland  branch  house 

72-73,  139-140 
eastern  financial 

connections         28-29,  43_44,  208 


East  St.  Louis  plant         16-17, 

47-48,  132,  151-152 
incorporation  and 

capitalization  27-28,45, 

80,  137,  202-203 
Kansas  City  plant  47-48,54-55, 

99,  103-104,  114,  132,  148-149 
loan  from  Morris  &  Co.  38 

Missouri  River  plants  28 

rumors  of  bankruptcy  35-36 

South  Omaha  plant  62-63, 

99-100,  104,  132 
South  St.  Paul  plant  104,  134-135 
St.  Joseph  plant  14-15, 

60,  104,  132-134,  148-153,  166 
Swift  &  Company,  G.  F.  80 

Swift  Brothers  80 

Swift,  Edwin  C.  67,  78-81, 

99,  126,  208 
Swift,  Gustavus  Franklin 

at  Chicago  plant  17-18, 

59-61,  141-147 
at  Cleveland  72,  139-140 

at  Fitchburg,  Mass.  70-71 

at  Kansas  City         47"48,  54*55,  99 
at  London  64,  91,  207 

at  Omaha  62-63,  99-100 

at  St.  Joseph,  Mo.  14-15 

at  St.  Louis,  Mo.  and  East 

St.  Louis,  111.  16-17,77 

buying  live  stock        58-59,  121-128 
by-products  development       4, 

10,  12,  131 
church  62 

correspondence  86-87 

early  slaughtering  at 

Chicago  8,  10,  26,  128-129 

early  years  on  Cape  Cod       25, 

49,  72,  119-124 
encourages  stock  ownership 

by  employees  172-173 

by  customers  81,173,208 


218 


THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS 


Swift,  Gustavus  Franklin 

(Continued) 
financing  24-25,87-88 

horses  58,  62-63,  83-85, 

94-95,  100,  112-114,  196 
insists  on  cleanliness  48-56 

insists  on  dressing  animals 

carefully  54-55,  57,  59-61 

New  England  and  Albany 

until  1875  25,49-52, 

74-75,125-127 
personal  appearance  3,  29,  193 

photographs  of      Frontispiece,  132 
refrigeration  and  refrigerator 

cars        9,27,50,57,62,107, 
130-131,  185-192,  195-201,  205 
sarcasm  53"54,  i73"i74 

selling  9,  63-81,  91,  109-110 

starting  at  Chicago  26, 

128-129,  136-137,  142-143 
starts  at  14  7 

steamship  rate  arbitration       95-96 
teacher  21,  58,  140,  146,  167 

tendency  to  business 

expansion     24-30,44-45,117-137 


warring  on  waste 


3-13, 
18-21,56-57 
90 


Swift,  Louis  F. 
Swift,  Mrs.  Gustavus 

Franklin  91,  123,  170 

Swift,  Nathaniel  53,  123 

Swift,  Noble  119 

Swift,  Sally  Sears  Crowell 

(mother  of  G.  F.  Swift)  120 

Swift,  William  (brother  of 

G.  F.  Swift)  70-71 

Swift,  William  (father  of 

G.  F.  Swift)  120 

Swift's  Market,  Clinton,  Mass. 

49-52,  74-75,  78,  in 


Tallying  beef 

19 

Tankage 

11 

Teacher,  Swift  as 

21,  58, 

140,  146,  167 

Tiffany  refrigerator  patents 

and  cars 

189 

Time  saving 

182 

Titles 

116 

Tongues,  beef 

10 

Trade  wars 

12 

Training 

managers 

21-22 

men 

140,  146,  182 

Tripe 

10 

keg 

56 

Trunk  Line  Association 

184 

U 

United  States  Steel  Corporation        5 

University  of  Chicago 

121 

W 

Waller,  0.  W. 

150-153 

Waste 

4,20 

Watchman  challenges  S 

wift       16-17 

Weight  tickets,  loans  on 

42 

Widows,  work  for 

101 

Wickes  refrigerator  patents 

and  cars 

189,  198 

Wool 

38 

Worcester,  Mass. 

5o 

Yards 

see  Chicago,  stockyards 
Yardstick,  the  forbidden 


158 


Zimmerman  refrigerator  patents 

and  cars  189,  197,  199-200 


UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS-URBANA 
B.S9772S  C004 

THE  YANKEE  OF  THE  YARDS  LOND 


12  025409449 


